


How to Survive the World of Vikings

by JeanieLee



Category: How to Train Your Dragon (Movies)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Dragons, Family, Friendship, Gen, Male-Female Friendship, modern character in berk, modern girl in berk
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-26
Updated: 2016-01-26
Packaged: 2018-05-16 11:31:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 24,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5827033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JeanieLee/pseuds/JeanieLee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When I said 'I wished I was in How to Train Your Dragon,' I meant working for Dreamworks!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer – I do not own How to Train Your Dragon, but I do own a good number of plush Toothless's

 

Hiccup the Useless had struck again. He had built a device that would throw a net and effectively trap a dragon within it and had tested it during a raid early that morning, despite many of the villagers that had seen him out in the chaos to yell at him to get back inside. He had been so sure that this time the device would work, that he would capture a dragon and his life would get tremendously better. And it had worked, just not the way that it was supposed to. Instead of catching one of the attacking dragons as they went after the sheep, it had instead taken down several Vikings and had allowed the sheep to be stolen, one of them being his father.

The relationship with his father was strained to say the least. Being the son of the chief was never an easy thing, add in the fact that he wasn’t even close to being anything like his father and that just made life tougher. Hiccup wanted so bad to be out there fighting dragons, to prove himself to the villagers and make his father proud. He longed for his father to look at him with pride, but instead all he got was looks of disappointment and frustration. 

“Why can’t I do anything right?” Hiccup asked himself, kicking a rock out of his way as he walked through the forests. After that morning's fiasco, he didn’t want to wait for his father to come home and for the awkwardness to ensue. So, like he had done many times after something went wrong with one of his inventions, he left the house and simply walked around the forest for hours. Try as he might, he just could not be the son that his father wanted. He couldn’t seem to fit in with everyone else no matter how hard he tried. He was too small, too skinny, too weak. He was just…different, and he didn’t want to be. 

All he had to do was take down one dragon and he would be set. He would be a Viking. His father wouldn’t look at him with disappointment, maybe Astrid would finally give him a chance. At least, she didn’t make fun of him when he messed up like the others did though she did nothing to defend him either. But he had to keep positive. She wasn’t joining in. That had to be a good thing. If he could just take down a dragon maybe he could get a date with her.

He climbed over a small boulder and plopped to the ground on the other side.  He started forward to continue on but stopped when his green eyes spotted something a few yards away from him. Something was lying near the bushes. Hiccup pulled out his knife, just in case. He approached it with caution, frowning slightly as he studied the figure. It was a person, lying face down in the dirt. They wore strange blue leggings, black boots made of something Hiccup had never seen before, and a pale blue short sleeved tunic, clothes unlike any Hiccup had seen before. 

He crouched down beside the figure and slowly reached out, prodding their right shoulder. The figure didn’t respond. Dark brown hair was a mess of tangles, full of leaves and dirt. Hiccup gently pushed the head to the side and let out a gasp. It was a girl, maybe only a few years older than him. The oldest she could possibly be was seventeen. How had she gotten here? Her hair stuck to her forehead and looked sticky. Blood. She had hit her head on something and looked to have a nasty gash on her forehead.

Her mouth was open slightly and Hiccup reached down and placed his hand before it, to see if she was still alive. Warm breath hit his fingertips. She was alive, though injured.  Hiccup stood and put his knife away. Whoever she was and however she got here would have to wait. She was injured and needed help. 

Hiccup turned and ran back the way he had come, heading back to the village. He ran as fast as his feet would carry him, heading for home. His father should be there. If not, he would get Gobber from the stall.  They needed to get that girl to Halla. When he finally reached the house of the chief and his family upon the tallest hill that let the house overlook the village, Hiccup ran into the house to find his father sitting before the fire, struggling for breath.

“Dad! There’s a girl, in the forest,” he said as he fought to catch his breath, bending over and putting his hands on his knees as he looked towards his father. “She’s alive, but it looks like she hit her head.”

The only sound that filled the house for a few moments was the sound of the fire popping. “Who is she?” 

Hiccup shook his head. “I don’t know.”


	2. I Take a Tumble

Going to college is never easy. Going to college when you live two hours from the campus sucks. But three times a week I would make the trek. Get up at five in the morning, leave the house at seven and get to Fullerton for my classes. Yes, I could have gone to San Bernardino and the drive would only be half an hour, but the longer drive meant more time out of the house and away from my parents. I loved them, but they were a bit overbearing. Okay, so a bit is putting it mildly. They were always pushing me to do my best, to take advantage of the opportunities that they never had when they were my age. Neither of my parents had graduated from college and they wanted to make sure that I did. They wanted to make sure that I didn’t make the same mistakes that they had. They wanted me to have a steady career, not various jobs at fast food joints. 

But one thing that they didn’t prepare me for was how to change a tire. I knew how to change the oil on my car, but not a flat tire. So when I heard the flat tire pounding against the pavement, I couldn’t help but groan. Towing was going to suck. I was up in the mountains now, at nine o’clock at night, and it was misting. Thankfully not raining, just misting. So far at least. If it had been winter, I would have cried. Pulling the car over onto the small bit of dirt to the side of the road before it turned into a steep downward slope, I put the car into park and turned the engine off. I grabbed by purse off the passenger seat and began rifling through it, looking for my cell phone. 

Finally, after a few moments of searching, I pulled out my iPhone. “No reception. Seriously?”

I felt like banging my head against the wall. Yeah, once you got into the mountains the reception was poor but there was still typically, at least, one bar. And now all the sudden there were no. What. The. Hell. I tossed the phone back into my purse. I looked like I would get my first experience changing a tire. Letting out a breath, I unbuckled my seatbelt, grabbed the keys and climbed out of my little Aveo, slamming the door closed behind me. And there was the front left tire, deflated and looking rather pathetic. 

The air wasn’t cold, but the mist sure made it feel colder. I pushed the button on the key fob and the trunk popped open just before I reached it. I then put my keys into my pocket before pushing the trunk lid up. Some papers lay scattered in the trunk along with a bottle of oil just in case I ever needed it. Oh, there was my nice beach towel. I had been wondering where that had been. But no sign on the spare tire that I knew should be in there. 

“What the hell?” I muttered. Where was my spare? Did my mom or dad borrow my car recently without me knowing and gotten a flat? I would have to ask them when I got home, whenever that was. No spare tire. “Great. This is just…peachy.”

I would have to walk the rest of way into town. It was still probably about twenty minutes to town from here, though that was in good weather while driving. This weather while walking? This was gonna suck. I could hear my parents now. ‘Kendra Diana Burr, where have you been?!’ ‘Oh, just stuck walking home in the rain since someone used my freaking spare.’ Yeah, that would go over well. Hmm, maybe walking wouldn’t be so bad if it meant putting that conversation off.

Slamming the trunk door shut, I walked back around to the driver’s door and opened it. I pulled my keys out of my pocket as I leaned in to get my purse, putting them inside it and trying my phone once again. Still no reception. I heaved a heavy sigh as I shoved my phone back into my purse and then zipped it up. This was going to be oh so much fun. And of all the days I hadn’t thrown a jacket into the backseat of the car. 

I locked the car as I swung my purse onto my shoulder and closed the driver side door, checking to make sure it was locked before I started walking up the road on the small shoulder. The road was narrow like most mountain roads are. About three feet of shoulder and then everything went downward, and not gradually either. The slope was steep, though at least it wasn’t straight down like it was in some areas that I had thankfully already passed before the tire decided to give up the ghost. And hey, maybe my phone would get reception again while I was walking. Maybe. Hopefully. 

Ten minutes later I was soaked and shivering, still no reception. If I didn’t end up sick from this, I would be shocked. I heard a vehicle approaching from behind me and turned to see a while Ford truck slowing down beside me, the passenger window rolled down. The driver was a man in his late thirties, early forties that had light brown hair and a scruffy beard. “Need a ride, young lady?”

I inwardly scoffed. Yeah, like I was going to get into some strange man’s truck. He may have been sincere in his trying to help me, but these days you just never know and I was not about to risk it. I shook my head. “No thanks, I’m good.”

“Come on,” he said. “At this rate, you’ll make it to town sometime in the morning. And this is no weather to be walking in.”

“I said, no thanks,” I replied firmly, keeping my gaze on the direction I was walking. My heart rate picked up as he continued to drive slowly alongside me. He was really determined to give me a ‘ride.’

“Get in the truck.”

His friendly tone was gone and a glanced at the truck out of the corner of my eye. He was putting it in park. Oh shit. Shit, shit, shitty, shit, shit. I started running and heard the driver door creak open. I didn’t chance looking back. I simply ran as fast as I could along the shoulder of the road. If I got out of this alive, I was investing in a bottle of pepper spray. Maybe some steel toe boots too. 

I ignored the growing stitch in my side and kept running. I could hear him thundering along behind me. And then my foot caught a rock and I was sent flying. Up was down and down was up as I tumbled down the side of the road. The ground was above me and the sky below me. I screamed. And then everything went dark and I knew no more.


	3. I'm Surrounded by Fictional Characters

**  
** The first thing I was aware of was the fact that I was sore. My entire body seemed to ache and my head was pounding worse than any headache I had ever had before. Maybe this was a migraine. I’d never had one before so I didn’t know how it felt, but maybe this was one. And wherever I was, it was soft and warm and the smell of herbs and spices filled the air. But where was I? My nose twitched and I lifted a hand to scratch it, only to let out a groan. Ouch. That hurt. 

My eyes popped open as I gasped. The flat tire. The stranger chasing after me. Falling down the side of a mountain. No wonder I ached. But it seemed someone had found me, but who? Cause wherever I was, it sure didn’t look like a hospital. 

It looked almost like a log cabin and in the center of the room was a fire pit. Over the fire pit, a pot of something was bubbling. Shelves full of jars and pots lined the walls around the room and a narrow staircase led upstairs on the wall opposite the bed I was in. At least, I thought it was a bed. I wasn’t quite sure what I was laying on. There was a table a few feet from the bed upon which sat a bowl, a couple leather bound books, several pots, and loose little branches of planets. 

I pushed myself up, wincing and sat on the bed looking around. The bed was up against the wall and the blanket that had been on me was thick and looked like wool. And someone had changed my clothes. Gone were my shoes, pants, and shirt, and instead I found myself in an off-white, loose fitting long sleeve dress made of something soft. I reached up to rub my temples and found a piece of cloth wrapped around my head. 

“What the?” 

“Ah, you’re awake.” 

I looked towards the staircase to see an older woman coming down them. She was maybe around the same age as my mom, with dark brown hair beginning to go gray gathered up upon her head. And she was wearing something I’d expect to see out of the theater department at school. Or maybe in some movie set in medieval times, or the Medieval Times dinner theater down around Disneyland. 

“That was a nasty gash on your head,” she said as she reached the foot of the stairs and walked over to the table. Gash. Well, that would explain the headache. Falling down the side of a mountain, bound to have hit a rock. 

“Who are you? And where am I?” I asked. Well, that could have been put better. Brilliant, Kendra. 

“I am Halla, and I am the healer of the village of Berk,” she replied. I frowned slightly. Berk. I knew that name from somewhere. “It was lucky that Hiccup found you when he did. A few more hours out there and you might have been lost to me.” 

Berk. Hiccup. My eyes widened. Berk was the village in the movie _How to Train Your Dragon_ and the book that the film was based on. Hiccup was the main character of the books and movie. There was no way. “Hiccup?” 

Halla nodded and smiled at me briefly before resuming her work of mashing the contents of the bowl on the table before her. “Yes. Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III, son of our chief, Stoick the Vast.”

They…There…Impossible. The world swam around me for a few moments before I passed out. 

***** 

I was _in How to Train Your Dragon_. I was in a fictional universe. How? No idea. Why? No idea. I mean yeah, I’d seen the movie and thought it was adorable, but why was I suddenly in it? Dream, possibly? I shifted slightly on the bed as I stared up at the wooden ceiling above me, grimacing slightly at the soreness of my body. Nope. I was too damn sore for this to be a dream. But why was I here? Why me? 

When I said ‘I wished I was in _How to Train Your Dragon_ ,’ I meant working for DreamWorks, even though I can barely draw a stick figure. But still, it would be cool to work on a movie like that if I could draw. It’s like how I wish I could work for Pixar when even my stick figures don’t look like they should. They look, well, rather pathetic. But still it would be cool to work for them, just like it would have been cool to work on _How to Train Your Dragon_. But this? Laying here injured in the healer's house in Berk, this was so not what I had meant. 

Several loud knocks came from the front door. I pushed myself up and stared at the door. I heard movement upstairs and within a few moments, Halla was hurrying down the stairs. She finished throwing her hair up into a bun just before she opened the door. My jaw dropped open. The man standing there was huge!  Dark hair was hidden under a helmet with huge horns attached to it and he sported a bit of stubble. “Spitelout? What is the meaning of this?” 

His eyes flickered past Halla and over to where I sat. “Stoick wishes to meet her.” 

The woman put her right hand on her hip. “And he will, after the girl has had some breakfast. When was the last time you ate, dear?” she asked, glancing over at me. 

I frowned. When was the last time that I ate? “I don’t know.” 

“See? So let me get some food into her before I take her to the chief.” And with that Halla closed the door. She then went over to a shelf and grabbed a couple bowls and went over to the pot over the fire, muttering under her breath about how the chief should know better than to bother her this early. She ladled the contents of the pot into the two bowls before grabbing a wooden spoon and handing it to me along with one of the bowls. It smelled delicious and made my mouth water, whatever it was. Glancing down at it, it looked to be some sort of thick stew. 

“Eat up,” she said before digging into her own bowl. It was rather bland, but it was food and my stomach was thankful for it either way. Then again, with my taste buds, anything that wasn’t super spicy was bland to me. 

“Thank you,” I said between bites. 

She smiled at me. “You’re very welcome. And what is your name?” 

“Kendra Burr,” I replied. 

She frowned slightly, pausing her eating. “Highly unusual name.” 

For this place? I’ll bet is was unusual. Then again, it wasn’t like my name was that common back home either. The rest of the meal was eaten in silence. Halla finished before me, left her bowl on the table and then went upstairs. I had just finished my bowl when she came back down with a bundle of clothes in her arms. “These are some of my old things, but I they should fit you.” 

“What happened to my clothes?” I asked as she plopped the clothes down on the end of the bed. 

She pulled a dark green shirt from the pile. “They were in as good as shape as you were. Yes, I think these will fit you just fine.” 

She tossed the dark green shirt, some dark brown leggings, and a tan leather skirt onto my lap. “Change into those and I’ll go see about some boots.” 

She then went back upstairs and left me staring at the clothes. Well, they said when in Rome, do as the Roman’s do. Since I was in Berk, might as well dress like them. Not that I had a choice since my clothes were apparently beyond use now. And I had just bought those jeans last week. Poo. 

I sighed, pushed the blanket off my legs and stood. Still sore, but doing better. And now my feet were cold since it seemed she took my socks too. I pulled off the dress to see that she had changed my undergarments as well.  She had probably seen my bra and wondered what in the heck it was. By the time she came back down the stairs with a pair of boots in hand, I had just finished pulling on the skirt over the leggings. 

“Hmm. Those fit you well,” she said as she handed me the boots, looking me up and down. I took them and sat down on the bed to put them on. The entire ensemble was surprisingly very comfortable. 

“Thank you,” I told her as I finished putting on the boots. 

She smiled, then gestured for me to sit. “I want to check your head.” 

I sat down and she unwrapped the bandage from around my head. She held the wrap in her hand as her hazel eyes scrutinized the wound on my head. I glanced at the bandage and saw a small bloodstain. She pursued her lips. “It’s looking good, but I want to keep it on a few more days,” she said as she began to rewrap my head. “Now, come. Mustn’t make the chief wait any longer.”

I followed Halla out the front door and felt my jaw drop. The sky was overcast and the air smelled of rain and the ocean. Seeing Berk like this was simply incredible. I closed my mouth after a moment and followed Halla through the village. People were milling about the village, glancing at me and then talking quietly with someone close by. I grinned sheepishly.

Within minutes, we were climbing up the large stone staircase that lead to the Mead Hall. The doors were huge and from here the view was amazing. You could see the entire village and the ramps that led down to the docks. It was… incredible. There were some people milling outside the hall, including a familiar group of kids. The huge, but like a giant teddy bear, Fishlegs. And there was Snotlout, trying to flirt with Astrid, who looked like she was about to clock him. And then twins were arguing over…something. And then there was Hiccup, standing somewhat away from the other teens. They all stopped talking when Halla and I reached the top of the stairs and stared at me. 

I didn’t realize I had stopped and was staring back at them until Halla said, “Come, Kendra.” 

I glanced toward her to see she had already opened the door. I sent a small smile towards the teens before I followed Halla into the Hall. A fire was roaring in the pit and the torches were lit. I knew the Hall was big from what was shown of it in the movie, but I wasn’t prepared for just how big it was. But my attention was quickly drawn away from the room and to the adults that filled it, who parted like the red sea when I entered.

Standing on the other side of the fire pit thing in the room was Stoick the Vast, Gobber at his side and the man that had come for me early on his other. Just as the teens did outside, they all stared at me and the room went silent. Okay. Awkward. “Um, hi.”


	4. They Figure Out What to Do With Me

****

These guys had definitely been eating their Wheaties. They were huge! I mean, yeah they were shown as huge in the film, but the majority of them had to be around seven feet tall! There were even some women in here that were as large as some of the men. Guess Halla was one of the few thinner women around. But when you fought dragons for a living, I guess you did have to be buff. But still, good lord. There were probably sumo wrestlers back home smaller than these guys. 

I felt a hand on my shoulder and suddenly found myself stumbling forward, Halla having pushed me gently to move though it had caught me off guard obviously. Oh yes, stumbling probably really helped with making a good impression. I glared back at her as I caught myself, though her eyes were not on be, but across the hall on Stoick. I straightened up and looked back towards Stoick, Hiccups father. Sure, he made some stupid mistakes in the movie, but he had his people’s best interests at heart. And he did love his son, he just did not understand him.  He did not understand that Hiccup being different was not necessarily a bad thing. Yet. 

“What’s your name, lass?” Stoick asked after a moment, breaking the awkward silence that had filled the hall. 

Yup, still sounded like Gerard Butler. I swallowed. “Kendra. Kendra Burr. And who are you?” I asked, feinting interest. 

Of course, I already knew who he was, but they did not know that. They could not know that. How would I even explain that I came from a world where they were all characters in a piece of fiction? That and they would think me a creeper. Or a spy. 

He straightened up a bit. “I am Stoick the Vast, Chief of the Hairy Hooligan’s,” he replied. The man that had come from me at Halla’s shifted on his left, seeming almost anxious. Stoick's eyes flickered in the man’s direction before returning to me. “How did you- “ 

“Get here?” I finished for him. He looked at me for a moment before nodding. I shrugged. “I wish I knew. The last thing I remember was being chased by a man that,” I paused and looked down. I was pretty sure what he had intended to do to me, but actually saying it allowed just seemed to make what I had nearly gone through all the more real. And horrifying. “I’m pretty sure that he was going to take advantage of me.” 

That got a response out of the crowd. They shifted and began mutter amongst themselves. Loudly. “It wasn’t anyone here,” I added quickly, holding up my hand in surrender, not wanting anyone to get suspicious of someone in the village. I sighed and dropped my hands. “But anyway, after that I fell. Guess I hit a rock or something and then next thing I knew, I was waking up in Halla’s.” 

Stoick simply looked at me with an expression I could not read. “Where are you from?” 

I bit my lip as I thought. How the heck was I going to explain this? “I come from the small village of Arrowhead, which I think is quite a long ways from here.” 

Hmm. That worked. And a ‘long ways from here’ was putting it mildly. Very mildly. My home was another world. Though I could not exactly say that. They would think I was nuts. I began to fiddle with the edge of the right sleeve of the shirt Halla had given me to wear as more mutterings broke out. 

Gobber looked at me curiously and the room once again went silent. “How old are ye, lass?” 

“Eighteen,” I replied. “My birthday was two weeks ago.” 

Getting dropped into another world, surrounded by animated characters. Yes, lovely belated birthday gift. A few mutterings broke out in the crowd once again. 

“I say we ship her off!” shouted someone in the crowd. 

“Yeah!” I heard someone else yell in agreement. “She could be a spy! Who knows if this ‘Arrowhead’ even exists?” 

I felt a hand on my shoulder and looked over to see that Halla had come up beside me. “She’ll not be going anywhere. She is injured and in my care.” 

Stoick opened his mouth to say something, probably to tell everyone in the hall to be quiet but stopped as if he had heard something. I frowned slightly for a moment before the sound reached my ears as well. The sound of a stick hitting the stone floor of the room. The sound slowly seemed to be noticed by everyone else and the room went silent. The crowd to the left of Stoick parted like the red sea to let someone I could not see through. It was a few minutes before I saw who had caused them to part like that. The elder walked into view to stand before the fire pit, her stick having made the sound that had sounded throughout the room. 

She stopped before the fire pit and looked toward me. “Come closer, child.” 

Her voice showed her age, but it was anything but frail. It kind of reminded me of the voice of the woman that played McGonagall in Harry Potter. I had no idea how I had expected her to sound, seeing as she never spoke in the movie and was only seen once or twice, but this voice was not what I had expected to come from her mouth. It held this sort of quiet strength. It was easy to see why she was so respected within this village.

I stepped forward without Halla pushing me this time and walked over to where the elder stood before the fire pit. People moved back as I walked over to her. My stomach was in knots. Who knew that having your fate be decided by a bunch of fictional characters could be so nerve-wracking. I stopped before the elder and looked down at her. Now, I was not the tallest person in the world, but this woman was short! 

She looked up at me then lifted the hand that was not holding her staff and gestured for me to kneel, which I did seconds later. I could feel the cold stone floor through the leggings Halla had given me to wear. She then slowly walked around me, her pale blue eyes scanning me. Her eyes actually reminded me of Astrid. Perhaps they were related. Hmm. She stopped before me once more and gestured for me to stand. 

“This child is no spy,” she said as I pushed myself back to my feet. The woman continued to look at me curiously. “Though, I believe she has much to learn, and she shall learn it here.” 

People in the crowd shifted but said nothing. Then Stoick asked, “Are you sure, Gothi?” 

She turned to look at Stoick and I caught sight of a small smile on her features as she turned. Just what did this woman know about me? And what did she mean that I would learn something here? I knew of so many things that they did not, so they could probably learn something from me. 

“Positive,” she responded, before slowly turning back toward me. “Powerful magic brought this girl here. Perhaps the gods are behind this, I do not know. But one thing I am certain of; we all have something to learn from this.” 

I could not help but raise my eyebrows. Magic? Gods? Seriously? She thought that was how I had gotten here? Then again, it was the only theory I had heard so far. It was technically impossible to be where I was at that moment, so perhaps it was not so impossible that magic had brought me here. 

The hall erupted in noise as those in the hall began to protest what the woman had said. Stoick stood after a few seconds of noise and pounded his fist against the side of the fire pit. “SILENCE!” he roared, his voice echoing through the large hall. It took a few seconds, but the hall fell silent once more. “The Elder has spoken, and we will honor her decision.” 

“Where will she stay?” asked someone in the crowd to my right. 

“I had thought it was obvious,” I heard Halla say from behind me and glanced back to see her walking up to come stand on my left. She set a hand on my shoulder. “She’ll stay with me. She is already in my care and she fits in my old things.” 

I could not help but smile at the woman.  She had taken care of me before I had regained consciousness and now she was offering me a permanent place to stay while I was here, however long that would be. She was giving me a home away from home and I felt a deep sense of gratitude for the woman. She did not have to take me in, but she was. “Thank you.” 

Halla smiled and squeezed my shoulder gently. 

“Now that that is decided, we have other things to talk about,” Stoick said, causing my head to turn back toward him. “Halla, you two may go. I will fill you in later.” 

I glanced over at Halla to see her nod in acknowledgment. The hand moved from my shoulder and down to my shoulder blade as Halla directed me to turn around and head for the doors of the hall. The hall remained silent as Halla and I walked to the doors and I could feel the eyes of everyone in the room upon me as we walked past them. Halla moved in front of me and pushed open the right door. I winced slightly at the bright sunlight as I stepped outside. As Halla let the door close behind us, I could hear the room break out into noise. 

Gulls cried in the distance and whispering that had been coming from my left stopped as soon as we stepped outside. I glanced over to see the teens still gathered outside. The twins had stopped mid-fight and the position they were currently in was quite comical. Ruffnut looked like she was trying to climb on top of her brother. The looks on their faces reminded me of the scene in the movie where Hiccup got the dragon back into the cage with the eel under his vest. Hiccup was there as well, slightly behind the others. 

“Kendra,” Halla called and I glanced over to see that she was already a few steps down the stairs. I glanced toward the teens and flashed them a grin before hurrying after Halla down the steps. She continued down the stairs once I reached her side. She said nothing until we entered the village, where she began to point out where things were to me as we walked through its many levels until we reached the level she lived on.

She stopped talked outside the front of her house.  “Now, I am telling you this because I’m going to need you to run some errands around the village for me. Pick up ingredients, drop off orders, stuff like that. I don‘t know what it is like where you are from, but here you are of age. And as such, you will have to work.”

I nodded as she spoke. It made sense and was only fair that I did my part since I was an adult. Though part of me wondered how long it would take me before I stopped getting lost here. Shoot, my senior year of high school and there were still times that I got lost on that campus and it was not that big of a school. 

“Were you trained in anything where you came from?” she asked.

I nodded, wondering how I was going to word this since I was sure they did not know the word veterinarian here. “I was studying medicine back home though it was specifically for animals.”

Halla looked slightly surprised for a moment before smiling. “Well, I am sure that will be needed here, what with the sheep getting hurt so often. Though in the meantime, you will be working with me.”

I returned the smile. “Sounds good.” 

“Right,” she said before putting her hands on my shoulders and steering me inside. “Now to check on that head of yours.”


	5. I Take a Wrong Turn

It was not until the next afternoon that Stoick arrived to speak to Halla about whatever had happened in the meeting after we had left. She had taken the bandage off my head that morning, saying that it was looking very good so I no longer had that wrapped around my head. When Stoic arrived, I was promptly shooed out of the house and told to drop off some stuff at the home of Phlegma the Fierce, which Halla had pointed out to me the day before. The hard part was remembering just which home it was that she had pointed to when she had said Phlegma’s name. Which level of the village had we been in when she had pointed it out? So until I remembered or until someone around the village took pity on me and pointed me in the right direction, I was stuck wandering through the various levels as I tried my hardest to remember where exactly Phlegma’s house was.

Remembering locations of places was not that simple for me. It usually took me at least two weeks to be sure of where my classes were located every year in high school. Before that time, I’d constantly need a map in my hands so I knew where in the world I was going. I was even doing that my senior year when I had been seeing the same campus every day for three years. You would think I’d have the campus memorized like the back of my hand by that point, but sadly not. Now, stick my directionally challenged self in an animated film and I was screwed. 

I shifted the small woven basket in my hands as I turned a corner to head around one of the buildings and found myself knocked to my butt. Something metal clattered to the ground. I let out a breath and tightened my grip on the basket, which thankfully I still had a hold of and did not lose its contents. I really did not want to explain to Halla that I lost the contents when I ran into someone while lost. I wanted to do this for her. After all, she had taken me in when she did not have to. 

“Oh gods, I’m so sorry!”

I looked up to see that I had walked right into Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III, who was fumbling as he tried to pick up whatever it was he had dropped in the collision. Something had been wrapped in cloth though he grabbed it before I could figure out what it was. Poor kid looked extremely embarrassed.

“It’s okay,” I replied as I put the basket under one arm and pushed myself to my feet. “No harm done. I’m Kendra, by the way.”

He finished wrapping up whatever he had dropped and stood up. “Um, Hiccup.”

I blinked, trying to look as if I was thinking about who he was. “Hiccup? It was you that found me.”

He blushed slightly and ducked his head. Good God, this kid was adorable. Sure, he was different but why that stopped anyone from being his friend was beyond me. “Yeah.”

I smiled at him. “Thanks for getting me help.”

He shrugged slightly, still looking down at his feet, embarrassed. “Eh, it was nothing.”

“You didn’t have to get help, but you did,” I responded. Some of the others may not have helped some random girl that had just shown up in the middle of the forest. Like that one dude that wanted me thrown off the island before the elder spoke up. I cleared my throat. “Anyway, any chance you can help me find Phlegma’s? Halla wanted me to drop whatever this is off, only I can’t remember where Phlegma lives.”

Hiccup nodded after a second of just studying me. “Sure. I was going there to drop off these knives she wanted sharpened, actually.”

“Great,” I replied as Hiccup began heading in the direction that I had come from, gesturing for me to follow him. “What exactly does Phlegma do?” I asked as I fell into step beside him as we made our way through the village.

“She’s the village midwife,” he replied as he led the way down into another level of the village. “Though most of the time, she’s just a warrior.”

“Ah,” I said as we continued walking. Oh come on, there had to be something I could say to keep the conversation going. “So you sharpened her knives?”

Ah yes, that was a good one. Of course, I knew that he probably had since he worked with Gobber, but no one had actually told me anything about that. I looked over at Hiccup when he nodded. “Yeah. I’ve been working with Gobber, the village blacksmith since I was little,” he said before glancing down at himself. “Well, littler.”

The corners of my mouth turned upward. Yes, he was shorter than me, but I had a couple years on him. He had been like fourteen in the movie and I had to be somewhere before the movie started since dragons were not all over the place. “Well, you’re how old?”

Hiccup frowned slightly as he glanced toward me. “Thirteen. I turn fourteen in four months.”

Yup, before the movie. How long? No idea. I grinned. “Well, there you go. You’re still young. You’ll probably hit your growth spurt in a few years.”

Hiccup just looked at me, the cutest confused expression ever on his face. God, this poor kid needed a friend. Someone that praised him for being the way he was, not put him down like the entire village seemed to do to him in the movie. Sure, he would have Toothless someday, hopefully soon, but even before that the kid needed a friend. 

He seemed to shake himself for a moment before he looked away from me. “That’s her place,” he told me, pointing to a house on one of the lower levels of the village. Halla’s place was up on the next level…I think. Hmm, I’d have to ask for his help to find my way back to her place, it seemed. Phlegma’s place looked similar to the other homes I had gone past while searching, a carving on a Nadder at the crest of the roof. But unlike some of the over carver Nadder heads I had seen, this one was green in color. Okay, now that I could remember.

We walked up to the door and Hiccup rapped his fist against it twice. We heard movement inside and the door was pulled open a moment later. The woman was large. Muscular and tall, though not as tall as Stoick or Fishlegs. She had a small horned helmet set upon her auburn hair and large green-blue eyes. She smiled at Hiccup. “Ah, I’m guessing those are my knives?”

“Yup,” Hiccup smiled, handing the bundle to Phlegma. 

She pulled one of the knives out and inspected it for a moment before nodding. She returned the knife to the bundle and then turned her attention to me. Her smile faded slightly as she looked me over. I held out the basket to her with a smile. “Halla sent me to give this to you.”

She took the basket from me and peeked inside. She glanced up at me as she closed the lid, the corners of her mouth going back up. “Ah, this will be a great help,” she said. “Be sure to thank Halla for me.”

I nodded. “Will do.”

With one last smile, she closed the door. Hiccup and I turned and started walking away from the midwife’s house. “Any chance you can show me how to get back to Halla’s?”

Hiccup let out a soft laugh and nodded. “Yeah.” 

“Thanks,” I said, smiling over at him. We walked in silence for a little bit, but it was not an awkward silence. It was a comfortable one. Well, not really that comfortable but not very awkward either. It just…was. I sighed and wished I had pockets to put my hands into. “So, you’re a blacksmith?”

“Apprentice,” he told me. I glanced over at him, nodding as we approached a house that I vaguely recognized as Halla’s. “It’s up one level from here.”

“Cool. If I get shooed out again, I know where to go,” I told him, stopping before the door to Halla’s. “Thanks for keeping me from getting lost.”

“Eh, it was nothing,” he said, looking down at the ground. “I’ve got to get back to the stall.”

“See you around, Hiccup,” I told him before pushing open the door, seeing that Stoic was gone and Halla was nowhere in sight. I looked out the door as I closed it to see Hiccup walking away from the house. He was a good kid and he needed a friend. I smiled as the door closed. Well, I was going to make sure that he would have one before Toothless arrived. 

Halla came down the stairs at that moment and spotted me. “Ah, you’re back. Got lost?” she asked, a small smirk tugging the corners of her mouth. 

I nodded as I moved away from the door. “Yeah, but someone finally took pity on me and showed me to Phlegma’s. And then showed me back here.”

She chuckled as she headed over to one of the tables and began cutting up some ingredients. “Did you get the name of whoever helped you?”

I walked up to the side of the table and watched her cut. “Hiccup,” I responded. Halla stopped her cutting and looked toward me. “He seems nice.”

Halla simply looked at me with an unreadable expression for a moment before looking back down and resuming her cutting. “Aye. Hiccup Haddock. Always coming up with ideas and contraptions, he does, things that often cause more harm than good. He’s just…. different.”

“Everyone’s different,” I responded after a moment. Halla stopped her cutting and looked at me again with that expression I could not figure out. “Not even twins are exactly alike.”

She just continued to look at me. Okay, that look was starting to make me uncomfortable. “What?” I asked after a moment. 

That seemed to shake her back to Earth for she looked away and resumed her cutting. “Can you get me the mortar from the table by the bed?” she asked.

“Sure,” I said slowly. I pushed myself away from the table and headed over to the one that was closer to the bed I was currently using. Guess the conversation about Hiccup was over.


	6. Fire in the Night

It was several days before I saw Hiccup again, though the next time that I saw him was at night. Well, technically it was probably very early morning, but without a proper clock around I was not really sure what time of day it was anymore. The days since I had run into Hiccup had been quiet, with Halla sending me on errands now and again. The topic of Hiccup seemed to be something that Halla wanted to avoid since the day I had run into him. Perhaps she was taking my words about him to heart, or she was starting to think that I was just as crazy as he was. 

We had gone to bed well after dark and the moon hung high in the sky. Sleep had come quickly, for that afternoon we had gone into the forest to pick some herbs and my brain hurt from trying to remember the names of everything she had shown me. But sadly we were not able to sleep through the night. Early in the morning, I was awoken by the sound of yelling in the village and roars echoing through the night air. I lay in bed for a moment, my eyes open as I stared up at the ceiling before it finally clicked; a dragon raid was in progress. 

Sure enough, a few moments later I heard noise upstairs and seconds later Halla ran down the stairs, shoving a short-horned helmet onto her head. She had thrown some dragon scale armor on over a dark green dress and held a short ax in her free hand. “Up! Up!” she yelled as she reached the bottom of the stairs and rushed over to the bed that had been deemed as mine as I swung my legs over the edge. 

“What’s going on?” I asked. Yeah, I already knew but I could not let her know that. Too many questions. 

“Dragon attack. Get your boots on,” she replied, grabbing my boots from the foot of the bed and handing them to me.

“Dragon what?” I took the boots from her slowly.

“Hurry up!” I jumped slightly at her yell but quickly began to pull on my boots. She kept shifting on her feet and glancing toward the door. “We have dragons here and every so often they attack, destroying homes and stealing food and livestock.”

I nodded in understanding as I pulled on my boots. As soon as I was done and on my feet, she was herding me towards the door. “Now, I’ve got to get out there and help,” she told me as we stopped before the door. “Get to the Mead Hall and stay there with the little ones until someone comes for you.”

I was being sent to hang out with the little kids. Of course. But I was a foreigner here. Defenseless as a child. I nodded. “Okay.”

“Good,” she said shortly before opening the door and herding me outside. She pushed me in the direction of the Mead Hall before she ran off with a yell to help. 

The tall torches were up in the air and burned brightly in the night sky, illuminating the village. Homes were on fire. People were yelling. Sheep were belting. And flying through the air were dragons, hundreds of dragons. Sure, I knew that one day they would be nice friendly creatures in this village, but at that moment, looking up at them flying through the night sky, I felt fear. They were not nice to the village yet. They pillaged and burned and stole food for the huge dragon on their island, injuring Vikings in the process and destroying homes, possibly even lives.

One flew overhead, roaring and spraying fire just yards before me. I got no problem admitting it. I let out a yelp before turning and running in the direction that I knew would lead me up toward the Mead Hall. 

I ran as fast as I could, avoiding Vikings running all over the place with weapons in hand. I started up the wooden walkway up to the next level, panting hard and a stitch twitching painfully in my side. I was on the same level as the blacksmith stall and the long stairs that led up to the Mead Hall. I could see the base of them growing closer with every step I took. 

I glanced up when a roar sounded overhead and flat out ran into someone, sending us both flying to the ground. I pushed myself up and spotted Hiccup also on the ground. He had been pushing something that looked similar to what he would use to shoot down Toothless someday in the future. He pushed himself up and then offered a hand to me. “No dragons where you come from?”

I let laugh, which made me sound like I was losing it, as I took his hand. Within seconds, I was back on my feet. “That obvious?”

“Welcome to Berk,” he said in a way that made me unable to tell if he was being serious or sarcastic. I assumed the latter. He moved back to the cart thing that he had been pushing as overhead another dragon roared. A house nearby went up in flames. 

Hiccup started to move off, pushing his new invention before him as I stood there surrounded by chaos. I glanced toward the base of the stairs that led up to the Mead. Halla had told me to go up there and stay with the children because I was as useless in this situation as they were. I looked toward Hiccup. He was running as he pushed the cart thing, heading off past the flaming houses. Almost every Viking he passed yelled at him to get back inside.

Oh, Halla was probably going to kill me for this. But instead of going to the Mead Hall like I was supposed to, I instead ran after Hiccup. I dodged Vikings that were yelling and carrying weapons and a few that had clothing that was smoldering before I finally caught up to Hiccup. 

“What is that thing?” I asked as I started running just alongside him. He jumped, letting go of the handle of the cart thing, which stopped rolling and clunked to the ground. I winced as Hiccup ran into it. “Sorry.”

“I’m okay,” he said though it was more of a wheeze than anything. He took a few deep breaths before looking at me. “Uh, what are you doing?”

“What does it look like I’m doing? I’m going with you,” I replied as he grabbed the handle of the cart thing.

He started at me for a moment. “Why?”

I gave a shrug. “I’m curious about what the hell that thing is,” I said, gesturing with my head to the cart thing he had been pushing.

Behind us a dragon roared, causing both of us to glance back. Another home went up in flames, but I watched one dragon taken down by a Viking. It never went back up. I turned around to see Hiccup had started moving again, weaving through the Vikings running about around us. I ran and caught up with him. “Well, what does it do?”

He glanced over at me but did not stop moving. “One of the ways to catch a dragon is to throw a net over it. This thing should do that for us.”

“’Should?’” I repeated as we came to a stop on the rise that overlooked a field of grass. The dragons had not made it here yet and the sheep still grazed.

Hiccup opened his mouth to reply, but that was when the dragons found the sheep. He turned to the cart, unfolded several parts and it turned into something that I knew was a predecessor of the creation that he had used in the film to bring down Toothless. 

One dragon, a Nadder I believe, landed and started grabbing sheep. I glanced over to see Hiccup adjusting one last thing on his creation. Another landed beside it. In the distance, I heard someone shout, “THEY’VE FOUND THE SHEEP!”

“Hiccup,” I said slowly, taking a step back. One Nadder turned toward us, lifting its tail. Oh crap, the spikes. “HIT THE DIRT!”

I pulled Hiccup down, who yelped, just as the Nadder sent its spikes toward us. I could feel them fly by my hair and heard a ‘thunk’ as a few imbedded themselves in Hiccups net thrower. One grabbed the edge of my skirt and sunk into the ground. I swallowed heavily as I lifted my head, glancing over at Hiccup. That had been a close one. 

His green eyes studied me. “How did you know about the spikes on their tail?”

I opened my mouth to respond, only to be interrupted by the sound of the Nadder taking off, a sheep in its grasp. Hiccup quickly got up and went back to the net thrower, pulling the spikes out of it before he took aim for another Nadder that was getting ready to leave. I pushed myself to my feet just as Hiccup fired. It worked just fine, but instead the net capturing the Nadder, it wrapped around a Viking that had suddenly appeared to take on the Nadder.

Hiccup stood in shock as the Nadder took off, though thankfully without sheep since more Vikings were arriving on the scene. One of the Vikings went to cut whoever had gotten caught in the net free. I looked between Hiccup and the person trapped in the net. “Well, at least it worked.”

He turned his shocked, wide eyes toward me. “What? It did. You just…didn’t fire it soon enough.”

“HICCUP!”

Oh, no. I recognized that voice. Hiccups dad. We both grimaced and looked toward the net to see that the person that had been caught was now free. Yup, of course, it had to be his dad that had gotten caught in the net. 

“Kendra? I told you to go to the Hall!”

I winced. Oh, crap. Halla. Hiccup and I glanced toward each other, our expressions identical. They were expressions that said ‘we are so dead.’


	7. Under the Stars

To say that we had been in trouble would be an understatement. Stoick told Gobber to take Hiccup back to their home, barely giving his son a glance as he fumed. Hiccup glanced at me before Gobber herded him away. Seconds after they headed off, Halla had grabbed my arm in a tight grip and had not released me until we were back inside her home with the door closed. For the first time since I had met her, she looked pissed. The short ax in her hand only made her more terrifying. 

“Are ya daft, girl? I told you to get to the Hall,” she said. That was the worst part about her anger. She did not yell at me. She did not need to. 

I hung my head slightly. “I was on my way there when I ran into Hiccup- “

“Hiccup. Of course,” Halla muttered, crossing her arms over her chest. “The boy is a bad influence, always getting in the way, running around with his strange ideas…you should have just ignored him and gone to the Hall.”

I lifted my head, no longer feeling bad about defying her. Didn’t they see what they were doing to him? How much their shunning probably hurt him? He was just a kid, a kid that wanted nothing more than to be wanted and accepted. “What, you want me to shun him like everyone here does? Just because he doesn’t think like you guys do?” 

Halla opened her mouth to say something more but was cut off by a knock on the door. Whoever it was did not even wait for confirmation before entering. It was Stoick though he no longer looked angry. He looked weary. He glanced between Halla and me before his gaze settled on the healer. “You’re needed.”

Halla nodded before going about, grabbing a few things and putting them into a small basket. I then realized they were healing salves. There had been injuries, and from the way Stoick looked, they were pretty bad. After she had grabbed a few things, she headed to the door and followed the chief out. As she closed it, she looked at me. “Stay here. I’ll be back in a few hours.”

Before I could even respond, the door closed and I was left alone. I groaned and walked over to the bed, dropping down onto it. Someday they would see Hiccup as more than just a hindrance, an oddity. Someday his father would realize just how amazing his son was and stop trying to get him to be something he wasn’t. But I had no idea how far off that day was. How far ahead of the movie had I been dumped? A month? A few days? A year? I laid down on the bed, staring up at the ceiling. 

I could still hear shouting outside. Sheep belting. I have no idea how long I stayed there, just staring up at the ceiling, looking at the grain of the wood that had been used to build the floor of the second story above my head. Ooh, what a pretty knot in the wood. It was when I started seeing eyes staring down at me in the knots in the wood that I knew I had to get up. There were no eyes in the wood. Blame it on too much Doctor Who.

I pushed myself up and stood, glancing around the quiet house. There was still shouting outside, but it was quieter now. And the yelling was further away now, perhaps down a few levels. I headed for the door. I needed fresh air. I opened the door and stepped outside. There was no one near Halla’s and in the East, the edge of the sky was beginning to lighten. I glanced around and found a nice patch of grass just to the left of her door and sat down, pulling my legs up and leaning back against the house.

Sighing, I dropped my head back against the house, looking up at the sky. Stars shined against a dark blue backdrop, so many more than I was used to seeing back home in Arrowhead. Though the town was in the mountains, we still got the light pollution from the valley. You were able to seem more stars than you could down in the cities, but it was nothing compared to this. Here there was no such thing as light pollution. And I was seeing some that I had never been able to see at home. 

The sound of approaching footsteps made me look away from the sky and my eyes landed on a figure that paused his walking when I looked at him. I gave him a small smile. “Hey.”

“Hey,” he responded quietly before crossing the last few feet and sitting down beside me, his shoulder just a few inches from mine. “Sorry, I got you in trouble.”

I shook my head. “Hey, I was the one that decided to go with you. I got in trouble because of something I choose to do, not something you made me do.”

Hiccup said nothing and looked away after a moment. I sighed and looked up at the sky again. It was beginning to lighten, but plenty of stars were still visible. “I’ve never seen so many stars.”

I heard Hiccup move, but did not turn toward him. “You don’t have many where you come from?”

I shook my head, looking at an odd pattern in a clump that I could not make out. “They’re there, you just can see them all.”

“Why can’t you see them all?”

I lowered my head and looked over to see that his green eyes were locked on me. “Where I come from,” I began. I worried my lower lip and turned my eyes back to the sky. “It’s a lot different than here. The cities are bright and full of lights that sometimes make it hard to see the stars, even where I live in the mountains.”

The young Viking said nothing, but I heard him shift beside me again. After a few minutes, he asked, “Do you miss it?”

Did I miss it? Did I miss home? Even with all the pressures that my parents on me and teachers that gave out way too much homework? The long hours I worked at the local grocery store when I was not at school? But my parents loved each other and me, my coworkers were pretty cool, and I had some awesome friends. “Yeah,” I replied softly. “I miss my parents.” And indoor plumbing, I added in my head.

“No brothers or sisters?”

I removed my gaze from the sky as I shook my head. “Nope.”

He was looking toward the sky as well, though looked toward me after a moment with a small smile. “Me either.”

“Kendra.”

I froze at the sound of my name and saw Hiccup’s eyes go wide and fix on something just over my shoulder. I turned around. Just before the door to Halla’s was the women herself, looking weary and when her eyes landed on Hiccup, slightly irritated. “Hiccup.”

Hiccup quickly got to his feet. “Sorry, I was just…I’ll be going now.” He quickly moved past Halla and toward the level above where his home was. 

I pushed himself as Halla stood watching me. She said nothing as I moved past her and went into the house, her a few steps behind me.

“What was he doing her?” she asked the second it was closed.

I stopped next to the bed and turned to face her. “He came to apologize.”

“Just as he should,” she said with a curt nod. “Pulling you into his schemes, making you look back before the village.”

“And like I told him, I chose to follow him. He didn’t make me go with him, or ask me to. I wanted to go with him.”

She looked almost stunned for a moment before the stern look in her eyes returned. “I hope you choose better next time. Because of you being there, Mildew is already calling for you to be sent away from Berk.”

I glared at her. “I made the right choice tonight. His invention would have worked perfectly if he had fired it a few seconds sooner.”

She said nothing, just looked at me with her stern gaze. After a moment, she turned and headed for the stairs. “Get some sleep. We have work to do in a few hours.”

Once she disappeared upstairs, I turned and groaned, running a hand through my hair. Why was she being so-ugh! I kicked the end leg of the bed. “Ow! Ow! Ow!”

I hopped on one foot and sat down on the bed, only to help as something sharp poked me. Still stuck in my skirt with dirt on the end, was the Nadder’s spike. Somehow I had not sat on it outside. I yanked it from the fabric, which left a good sized whole, and set it down on the table near the bed. 

I sighed and flopped back on the bed, my food still throbbing. Someday soon she would see. Someday soon they all would see. The day he would shot down Toothless would be the day everything changed. But until then, Hiccup would be frowned at and I would bang heads with Halla about hanging around him. I rolled onto my side and closed my eyes, waiting for sleep to come to me.


	8. Home Alone

I have no idea how long I slept, just that I slept like a rock. The next thing I knew, Halla was shaking me awake. I sat up in bed, rubbing my eyes as she moved around the room. Sunlight shined through the gaps around the front door. The healer was by the caldron over the fire, which was now out, pouring spoonful’s of something into a bowl. She then grabbed a spoon and walked over to where I sat in bed, holding the bowl out to me. “Here you go.”

I hesitantly took the bowl from her, remembering her anger the night before. “Thanks.”

I felt her eyes on me as I took a bite of what turned out to be a bland stew. I looked up at her after a couple bites to see her handling the Nadder spike that I had pulled out of my skirt. After a second, she noticed me watching and set the spike down on the table. 

“I have to go to the war council,” she told me. I nodded. She opened her mouth and started to say something before closing it. After a few seconds of watching her consider her words, she said, “Just try to stay out of trouble.”

I scoffed and looked down at the bowl of stew in my hands. “It’s not like I planned on having a dragon firing spikes at me.”

I heard her sigh and looked up. “I know, Kendra. Just…think before you do something like that again. It would be a shame if Mildew got his way.”

“Who’s Mildew?” I asked. That was the second time she had mentioned him, and both times the context of it was not good. “Is he like the village crank or something?”

Halla cracked a smile. “Something like that,” she said before turning and heading for the door. She paused at the door and looked back at me. “I’ll be back in a few hours.”

I nodded that I understood. She opened the door and walked out, pulling it closed behind her. I sighed and looked down at the cooling bowl of stew. Eh, might as well. I was hungry, and her stew was pretty good. I would have preferred it with a little more spice to it, but oh well. 

Once I finished the stew, I sat with the bowl in my lap and stared around the house. Strangely quiet without the sound of the fire going. She said she would be back in a few hours. What the heck was I supposed to do during that amount of time? I sighed and got up off the bed, setting the empty bowl down on the table. It was no use staying in the house. I was not just going to sit there for who knows how long staring at the ceiling again.

I walked outside and took in the village as the door closed behind me. Several structures on this level were damaged, but it looked like most of it was down on the lower levels. I could see smoke rising from a few smoldering ruins. Stoick had looked grave when he had come for Halla the night before, but she had not mentioned that anyone died. Hopefully, all those injured she tended to were recovering okay.

I looked toward the upper level. A few stragglers were running up the steps toward the hall for the meeting. Smoke also rose from one of the buildings up there. The smithy. I smiled and started heading in that direction. Halla would probably not be very happy, but I could not find it in me to care. Hiccup was a good kid and pretty easy to get along with. Why people could not see that yet was beyond me. They would see, someday. After he nearly loses his life to save them and years of them putting him down. That could not be good for his self-confidence. 

As I headed up to the next level, I was not met by the usual stares and looks that I usually got while walking around. Evidently most people were up in the hall for the council. I reached the partly open aired building within a few minutes, the air ringing with the sound of a hammer hitting an anvil. I paused at the overhang and quickly spotted the person with the hammer. Hiccup was so focused on his work that he did not notice me. He hammered the metal a few more times before putting it into a barrel of water, sending up a large cloud of steam. 

Once it began to clear, I raised my hand and knocked on the nearest beam. “Knock-knock.”

He looked up from where he stood, pulling the metal from the barrel as he smiled. “Hey.”

“Hey,” I said, returning his smile. I moved further into the smithy until I stood across him. “Got the place to yourself today, huh?”

He nodded, glancing down at the metal on the anvil. Now that I looked at it, it looked almost like a sword. “Yeah. Gobber’s up at the council meeting, so he asked me to repair some of the weapons that were damaged last night.”

“Cool,” I responded. “Mind if I keep you company? Halla’s at the meeting too.”

His smile turned into a grin. “Sure.” 

Over the next few hours, I helped him repair weapons. He hammered swords that were horribly misshapen, sharpened axes and knives, and shaped spearheads and arrowheads. He would ask for something, tell me where it was, and I would go and retrieve it for him. Thankfully only a couple times I grabbed the wrong tool, but Hiccup took it all in stride with a smile.

After finishing an axe, he set down his tools and looked over at where I stood leaning against a worktable. “Let’s take a break.”

I gave a slight shrug. “Sure.”

“Come on,” he said with a smile, heading back behind a curtain that concealed the back room, gesturing for me to follow him. I stepped past the curtain and stopped. It was the small little workroom that Hiccup had spent a lot of time in during the movie. Light by a candle in the corner and above a workbench to the left of the door, tons of drawings. Plans for weapons, calculations, in a word; blueprints. 

I stepped into the room and moved over to the bench to look at them closer, Hiccup standing back and watching me. “You drew all these?”

I glanced back at him and saw him nod. “Yeah.”

I looked back at the drawings. “They’re really good,” I said. The glimpses of them we saw in the film did not do them justice. The detail in them was incredible. 

“Eh,” I heard him say. I glanced back at him in time to see the shrug. He had no idea how good they were. “They’re just plans for projects.”

I looked back at the drawings. “They’re still amazing. Way better than anything I can do.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I watched him come up beside me and sit on the stool, his head turned toward me. “I’m sure yours are good.”

I tore my eyes away from his drawings and looked at him with raised eyebrows. “I can draw stick people, and even they look pathetic.”

He laughed, which made me smile. He turned away and I heard him messing with something on the other side of the stool. A few seconds later, he turned around with two chunks of bread in his hand. He held one out to me. Still smiling, I took the offered bread. “Thanks.”

The bread was a little stale, but not horribly so. My stomach happily accepted it, making me realize just how hungry I had been. I swallowed a bite before asking, “So, what’s your next project?”

He stopped chewing for a second, looking genuinely stunned that someone was interested in what he was making. He shook his head after a moment and finished chewing a bite of bread. “I’m going to modify the net thrower so that setting it up doesn’t take as long.”

I nodded. “Yeah, it worked perfectly, just fired a few seconds too late.”

Further conversation was cut off by the sound of someone moving out in the main area of the smithy. A few moments later a male voice called, “Hiccup?”

“Back here, Gobber,” Hiccup called back as I turned around to face the door. A few moments later the curtain was pushed aside and the larger Viking stepped into the small room, instantly making it feel even smaller. 

“Ah, there ye are,” he said just as his eyes landed on me. “And ye got company.”

I heard Hiccup get off the stool and move around to stand on my left. “Kendra, this is Gobber,” he said, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw him gesture to the large blacksmith.

Gobber gave me a toothy smile. “Nice to meet ye, lass.”

I returned the smile. “Nice to meet you, too. I’m guessing the meeting is out now?”

“Aye,” he nodded. “Three ships are to head to the dragon nest within the hour and Halla will be going as well, so ye best be getting back to her place.”

“Right,” I said with a nod. I turned to look at Hiccup beside me. “I’ll see you later.”

He smiled and nodded. “Yeah. And thanks for the help.”

I raised the bread as Gobber moved away from the doorway so I could pass. “Thanks for the snack,” I said before passing Gobber and stepping through the curtain. As I walked through the smithy, I heard Gobber start talking, though his words I could not understand.

I emerged from the smithy and all around the village I could hear people shouting and gathering things for the upcoming voyage to the dragon nest. I walked through the village, heading back down to the level Halla lived on, chewing on a piece of bread. The sun was high in the sky, so it was possibly around noon or the early afternoon. No wonder I was hungry.

I was chewing on the last bite when I arrived at Halla’s. I pushed open the door and found the healer inside, hurrying about as she gathered things into a basket with a strap on it. She paused her work and looked toward the door as I closed it behind me. “There you are. Where have you been?”

I shrugged slightly. “Helping Hiccup repair weapons that got messed up in the attack last night.”

She looked at me for a moment before turning and continuing her packing. “At least, you were doing something useful. Can you get me the mortar from the table beside the bed?”

“Sure,” I said as I crossed the room to the table beside the bed that I called mine. I grabbed what she asked for and took it to her. 

She grabbed the mortar from my outstretched hand and placed it into the basket. She looked into the basket, her eyes scanning the contents. She then closed the lid and straightened. “I believe that’s everything.”

She looked at me for a moment before placing a hand on my shoulder. “Watch out for the place while I’m gone. You can take meals up in the hall. Stay safe and out of trouble, you hear?”

I gave her a small smile and nodded. “I’ll do my best to.”

She squeezed my shoulder gently before releasing me, grabbing the strap of the basket and slinging it up onto her shoulder. “That’s all I can ask for. I’ll be back in a few days.”

I nodded. “Right.”

She gave me a smile and then headed to the door. As it closed behind her, I thought back to the villager’s first voyage to the island in the movie, the one after the attack during which Hiccup shot down Toothless. Three ships had gone, only one had returned. Though that had not been everyone from the village, unlike the attack at the end. But if something similar happened this time, I prayed that Halla was on the ship that returned.

*****

The rest of the day was pretty boring. I straightened up things around Halla’s, took a nap, paced the room several times. I thought about going back up to the smithy to see Hiccup, but I had no idea if he was still there. So I spent the afternoon pretty much bored out of my skull. 

When evening finally arrived, I left Halla’s and headed up toward the hall for dinner. People still worked on the ruins on lower levels, clearing and beginning the process of rebuilding. A few younger children ran around outside before being called in by their mothers. But the village was significantly quieter. I glanced toward the smithy as I passed it, but the fire was out and the place appeared to be empty.

I climbed the long staircase to the hall and entered to find it pretty empty. Only a few people sat at the tables around the room, eating their meals. Platters of cooked meat and bread sat around the edge of the massive fire pit. I grabbed a platter for myself as well as a cup and headed over to a table. I sat my things down on the table before sitting down myself. 

The door to the hall creaked open and a group of familiar figures entered. Astrid looked about ready to kill Snotlout as the group headed over to the platters of food and grabbed some for themselves. I looked away from them as they moved to find a table and began to eat the leg of some bird that I had grabbed. I was chewing when I glanced up again, spotting them a few tables away. My attention was pulled away from them when someone sat down across from me, blocking the view. 

“Evening, Kendra,” Hiccup said with a smile. “Hope it’s okay if I join you.”

I grinned at him. “Of course, it is.”

He began to eat his own leg while I continued to work on mine. It was not bad, just a little bland. Though apparently something showed on my face, for Hiccup asked, “Is it okay?”

“Hmm? Oh, yeah,” I said, waving it off. “It’s fine. Just a bit different from home.”

He took another bite of his own and swallowed. “What’s the food like where you come from?”

“It’s a lot different from this,” I replied. “We have a lot of spices that you don’t seem to have here. And I usually take my food with a lot of spices. My parents think I’m nuts because I like it so spicy.”

He smiled as he set down his drink. “So it’s a little bland compared to where you’re from?” he asked, gesturing to the food on my plate.

I shrugged slightly. “Pretty much.”

He chuckled a little before he continued to eat his food. We continued to eat, Hiccup asking questions about the food at home every so often. When we were almost finished, I saw someone approach the table from the corner of my eye. I looked up to see Snotlout approaching. 

He stopped at the end of the table and looked at me. “Kenny, isn’t it?”

I frowned and looked over at Hiccup with a raised eyebrow, who fought down a smile. I looked toward Snotlout. “It’s Kendra.”

He blinked and then shrugged. “Anyway, what are you doing over here with my useless cousin?” he asked. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Hiccup look down at his plate. “You should be over with us, and you can sit right beside me.”

I looked him up and down before pushing myself off the bench. Standing, he was a little shorter than me, perhaps a little taller than Hiccup. “Okay, Snotty, listen up. Hiccup may not be as buff as you are, but brains usually beats brawn. He is not useless. He is smart and funny and I would rather be friends with him over you any day.”

He looked at me blankly. “What’s brawn?”

I groaned. Okay, where was the nearest wall? I wanted to bang my head against it.

“Exhibit ‘A’ of why I want to hang out with Hiccup over you,” I said before turning and heading for the door. I was almost down with my food anyway. I heard Fishlegs explaining to the twins what ‘brawn’ meant, which caused Ruffnut to laugh. I turned around just before the doors at the sound of running footsteps approaching me. Hiccup stopped just a few steps away from me.

“Did you mean that?” he asked. It took me a minute to recognize the look in his eyes. Hope. He was hoping that I had meant what I had said. 

My posture relaxed and a soft smile formed on my lips. “Of course, I did. He got my name wrong for crying out loud.”

Hiccup laughed. “Yeah, I can’t believe he did that.”

“He’s really your cousin?” I asked. That had not been something mentioned in the movie, at least from what I remembered.

He nodded. “Yeah,” he said before frowning. “How did you know his name?”

Oh, crap. How to explain this one. “I heard one of the others say his name when they came in a little after me. They weren’t sitting that far away.”

Thankfully he accepted that with a nod. “If you’re still hungry, I think there’s some fish left at my house that we can cook.”

I smiled. “I’d like that.”


	9. The Oncoming Storm

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, the chapter title comes from Doctor Who. It popped into my head and just stuck.

It was almost a week later that the ships returned. I had spent most of the time I wasn’t asleep with Hiccup, helping him with the tasks that Gobber had left him to do since the blacksmith had gone with the others to the dragon nest. It was one of the afternoons that I was keeping him company that we began to hear shouts in the village about the boats being back.

Hiccup stopped working on sharpening an axe and glanced outside. I followed his gaze as several younger children ran by, followed by mothers yelling for them to slow down though the women were smiling. Hiccup set down the axe, smiling. “Come on.”

Together we joined the crowd heading down to the docks. I could not help but feel anxious. How many ships had returned? Was Halla on one of them? If she wasn’t, what would happen to me? What would the village do without her? We walked down the wooden pathways that were attached to the cliff all that led down to the docks. Due to the crowd, we stopped at the tier above them and looked down. Two ships sat on the docks and both had sustained some damage.

The people on board the ships looked to be in slightly better shape for the most part. Most were covered in scrapes and bruises though I did spot a few broken limbs. They were in makeshift slings, which had to be Halla’s doing. I heard Hiccup sigh and glanced over at him. He was staring at someone down on the docks. I followed his gaze and spotted his father and Gobber. Ah, it was a sigh of relief. Both looked okay, just a couple scrapes.

I kept looking around in the crowd below for some sign of Halla. I swallowed and kept looking for her brown hair. She had to be okay. She was the village healer. They needed her, and so did I. Where else would I stay? She had taken me in from the get-go. 

“Kendra,” Hiccup said, setting a hand on my shoulder.

I looked over at him, beginning to panic. He nodded down at the docks. I followed his gaze and looked around desperately for a few seconds before I spotted her. She hopped off the second boat onto the dock. She had a few scrapes and a thin cut under her left eye, but otherwise she looked okay. I felt myself almost sag in relief. She was okay.

“Oh thank god,” I muttered as I watched her turn and help someone else off the boat. The man had a bucket on his head. His hands were pressed against the sides of his head and appeared to be moaning in pain, even though I could not really see a scratch on him. 

“Oh, no,” I heard Hiccup mutter as he removed his hand from my shoulder. 

I looked over at him, but he was staring down at bucket head. “What?”

“That’s Bucket. He can tell when a storm is coming because the bucket on his head tightens,” he explained. I looked back down at the docks. Another man hopped off the boat and took Bucket’s arm and started leading him away. “And since he doesn’t look good, it must be getting close.”

“What happens when there’s a storm?” I asked, watching as Halla helped more people off the boat. 

“We secure our homes and just stay in the Hall until it’s over,” Hiccup replied. “It’s all we can do.”

I watched as Stoick walked over to Halla and the two began to talk. They talked for a minute before Stoick headed up the docks as Halla helped the last few people off the boat. She had just helped the last person off and slung her basket over her shoulder when heavy footsteps sounded on the walkway close to where Hiccup and I stood. 

I turned and saw Stoick coming up the ramp toward us, Gobber right behind him. Hiccup was already turned toward him so all I saw was the back of his head. The two Vikings stopped before us. “Hiccup. Kendra.”

“Dad,” Hiccup said.

I nodded once. “Sir.”

“I saw Bucket. There’s a storm coming, isn’t there?” Hiccup asked.

Stoick nodded. “Aye. I think it’s why the dragons weren’t as fierce in their attack.”

“So that means we best start preparing for it,” Gobber said, stepping up to stand beside Stoick. “Stall still in one piece?”

I stepped up beside Hiccup. “The place is fine. Pretty clean, actually,” I said, glancing over at Hiccup. He looked over at me, the corners of his mouth turned upward. 

“Ah, so ye helped him out again?” Gobber asked.

I nodded. “Yup.”

He patted me on the shoulder with a laugh, which caused me to stumble into Hiccup. “Thank ye, lass.”

“What is she being thanked for?” Halla asked as she appeared from behind Stoick and Gobber, looking between the blacksmith and me. She looked a little worse for wear, and exhausted, but otherwise she was okay. 

I smiled at her. “I helped Hiccup at the stall.”

Halla glanced over at him before her eyes returned to me. If she was going to say anything, she was cut off from doing so by Gobber. “Best start warning every one of the storm.”

Halla nodded. “Right. I’ll need to restock some of my stores before it hits. Kendra, I’ll need your help with that.”

“Okay,” I said, starting to follow after the healer as she turned to head up to the village. I glanced back at Hiccup and waved. “Later Hiccup.”

*****

Turns out what Halla needed to restock on was herbs, things that looked like just weeds to me. After returning to her house, she dropped off her axe, emptied her basket and filled it up again with pots and bowls from around the house. Then we left. We walked through the village, which had come to life with people preparing for the storm, across a bridge, past the dragon arena, and into the forest. By the time we hit the tree line, the wind had picked up and the temperature had dropped from comfortable to chilly.

I followed Halla through the forest, the woman glancing around for what she needed. After a minute, she seemed to spot it and stopped to crouch down, pulling the basket off her shoulder. I crouched down beside her as she pulled a pot out of the basket and pressed it into my hands, saying, “Hold this.”

She pulled a knife from the basket and cut a branch from a plant before her and put it into the pot before going to cut another branch.

“Do you remember the name of this plant?” she asked me after a moment.

I thought back to the first time we had gone into the forest to restock her herbs when she had pointed out so many plants to me with names I could hardly pronounce. I shook my head after a moment. “Sorry, no.”

She looked at me for a second before turning back to the plant. After cutting off a few more pieces and putting them into the jar, she took the pot from my hands and put it back into the basket. “That should be enough,” she muttered. She then stood and shouldered the basket once more.

“Okay, now I need…” she muttered under her breath and she turned away and continued on into the forest, walking quickly. I followed after her, almost running to catch up with her. By the time I reached her side, she had found another plant and knelt before it. She set the basket on the ground and pulled out another pot, which she shoved into my hands. She then pulled off a good number of the small leaves on the plant.

I sniffed as a scent reached my nose. “Is that mint?”

She paused her work and looked up at me, a small smile playing at her lips. “Well, at least you remembered one plant.”

I returned the smile “Maybe there’s hope for me yet.”

She chuckled as she finished up gathering some of the mint before she put her things back into the basket and put it over her shoulder once more. We move a little further into the forest and Halla stopped at yet another plant I didn’t recognize and began pulling off some leaves. Though after a minute, she paused her work and glanced into the basket. 

“What?” I asked. 

She bit her lip for a moment in thought before nodding and bringing back out the pot of mint leaves, handing it over to me. “Go back and get a little more mint. People’s nerves will be frayed due to the storm, so best have plenty on hand to help to calm them down. “

I nodded as I pushed myself up from where I had been crouching beside her, pot in hand. “Okay.”

“Be careful,” she called after me as I went back the way we had come, looking around for the mint plant. Just past a tree, I found the plant. I glanced back in the direction of Halla and could still see her though she was a good ways away. I crouched down, set down the pot, and set about pulling off more leaves. 

I had been pulling for leaves for a few minutes when I heard something from the direction that Halla was in. I paused my work and glanced back, but saw her still working on the plant that I had left her on. She hadn’t moved. I shrugged before going back to work. I worked for a few more minutes before hoping that I had grabbed enough and moving to stand. 

As I pushed myself to my feet, I heard something move in the direction of the village. Once on my feet, I looked over and spotted a large boar standing a few feet away, staring at me. I slowly bent down toward the pot, keeping my eyes on the boar, specifically its large tusks. I grabbed the pot and slowly straightened up.

“Nice Pumba,” I said as I began to back up, keeping my eyes on the boar. I did not like the way that it was looking at me. What had I done, taken the mint leaves that he wanted?

SNAP!

A twig snapped beneath my foot. I glanced down and I heard the boar squeal and charge. I turned around and ran in the direction I had left Halla. I could hear the boar just behind me. 

“Halla!” I yelled as I ran, just seconds before my foot collided with something and sent my flying forward, the pot disappearing from my hand. I hit the ground hard, all breath knocked from my lungs and felt a sharp pain in my right leg. I went to push myself up and saw two feet in front of me. I heard Halla throw something before the boar squealed in pain. A thump and then all was quiet.

I heard Halla move down toward my feet. “Don’t move, Kendra. It got you good in the leg.”

I pushed myself up onto my elbows but didn’t move my legs. I could feel Halla’s hands around where the pain was, and could feel the area around it becoming damp. I glance over my shoulder, though not for long since it was uncomfortable, but long enough to glimpse a bloody gash on my lower leg. My stomach churned as I turned away and could feel bile rising in my throat.

I took a deep breath and released it slowly as I listened to the sound of Halla moving down by my leg, trying to get rid of the urge to puke. It subsided, but my stomach still churned. I was fine with blood, had no problem watching those animal hospital shows and looking at the innards of a cat while eating dinner, but it was something else to see my own blood all over my leg. 

I swallowed. “Where’s the boar?”

“Dead,” she replied. I heard fabric ripping before I felt pressure on the wound. “Threw my knife into its eye.”

I let out a breathy laugh. “You must have damn good aim.”

I felt something being wrapped around my leg. “That I do. Looks to be a female. It’s possible she may have babies in the area and thought you were a threat to them.”

“Oh,” I muttered, looking down at the dirt beneath me. Okay, so Pumba was not Pumba but Pumbina, and probably a protective mother. Ow, my leg hurt.

“Okay. I’ve wrapped the wound, but I’ll need to take care of it as soon as we get back to the village,” I heard her say before her feet entered my line of sight. Then her hands came into view and she bent down to help me up. Her hands were covered in blood. 

With a little difficulty, I was up and leaning heavily against her, her arm wrapped around me. A few feet away, the boar was dead and its eye was bleeding. I swallowed as we began to move past it in the direction of the village. This would probably take as long to heal as the wound on my head did. Though at least then I had been able to walk. 

“This is the second time since I’ve been here that you’ll be taking care of me,” I commented as we moved slowly through the forest. “I seem to be injury prone here.”

“I’m sure that will change over time,” she commented as we walked, or rather hobbled along. I glanced at her, waiting for her to elaborate, but she never did. 

*****  
By the time we got back to the village, it was after dark. Though even with the sun down, people were still moving about making preparations for the storm on the way. And now you could tell it was near. The winds were stronger and out over the ocean, you could see the storm clouds gathering strength. A few villagers glanced at us as we moved toward Halla’s house, but none stuck around. They simply ran off. But when we were almost to her house, two large figures approached us with a third smaller one moving behind them, the largest carrying a torch.

“Halla,” Stoick called as we neared her front door. We stopped and waited for him to get closer. Following behind him was Gobber and Hiccup. His eyes went to my leg. “What happened?”

“Sent her alone to gather more mint. Boar attacked her,” Halla explained. “Must have had her babies nearby.”

He was silent for a moment. I glanced over at Hiccup, who was staring at my leg. “You get what you need. I’ll take her up to the Hall. The storm will probably hit sometime in the night.”

“Right,” she said with a nod as she shifted me beside her. The next thing I knew, I was in the air, against the chest of Stoick. He had lifted me as easily as a rag doll. I glanced over at Halla, who nodded toward me. “I’ll see you in the Hall, Kendra.”

“Okay,” I replied before she headed off into her house. Stoick then turned and started toward the Hall, Gobber and Hiccup following after him.

“Have you ever used a dagger, Kendra?” Stoick asked me as we reached the upper level of the village. 

I shook my head and glanced up at him. He didn’t look down at me. “No, sir.”

“We’ll have to see about changing that,” I heard Gobber say from somewhere behind my head as Stoick reached the base of the stairs. I blinked rapidly. I suddenly felt very tired. 

“Kendra,” I heard Stoick say as I began to doze off. My head snapped up and I heard the doors to the Hall creak open. People had been talking but paused for a moment before asking what happened. “Hiccup, talk to her.”

“Um, okay,” I heard him say as I felt myself laid down upon a flat surface. I blinked up at the ceiling of the Hall high above me. That view was suddenly blocked as Hiccup looked down at me. “I’ve been thinking about ways to modify the net thrower.”

“Oh?” His face was blurry. I could see his mouth moving, but all I heard was noise. None of it made any sense. My leg hurt and all I wanted to do was sleep.

And then Hiccup was gone, replaced by Halla. She placed her hands on my face as she looked down at me. 

“Kendra, I need to sew up the wound. Bite down on this,” she said before putting something in my mouth before I could even try to say something. Halla then disappeared and I was left looking at the ceiling again. 

Then sharp pain came from my leg. Something piercing the skin and a painful tug. I screamed. It paused for a moment before starting again. I felt someone grab my hand before everything went dark.


	10. A Pain in My…Leg

Pain. That was the first thing that I felt. A sharp pain and soreness in my lower leg. Why did my leg hurt so bad? What had happened to me? I remembered Halla’s worried face, and blood on her hands as she helped me back to the village. My blood. The boar. We had been out picking plants before the storm hit and the boar had attacked me, thinking me a threat to her babies. But what happened after we had gotten back to the village, after Stoick had carried me to the Hall, I couldn’t remember. 

“Kendra? Can you hear me?”

The voice was familiar, and I was glad to hear it. A sense of comfort came with hearing it. The voice was young and male. Hiccup.

“Halla! I think she’s waking up!”

Slowly I became aware that I was lying on a hard surface, something soft elevating my head slightly. The room was warm and something soft had been draped over me. A blanket. I heard rapid footsteps and then felt a hand on my forehead. 

“Temperature is fine,” said Halla. “Kendra, can you open your eyes?”

It took a moment for me to process her request. My eyelids feel like lead, but somehow I managed to get them open. Everything is a blur for a few seconds and a face appeared above me. Then it sharpened and I recognized Halla, who looks relieved. Another face appeared on my other side. Hiccup.

“Thank the gods,” he muttered. 

The corners of my mouth twitch upward and somehow even that little bit of movement hurts. “Hey.”

I winced at the sound of my voice. I sounded like I had a frog shoved up my throat, which also throbbed when I talked. The saliva in my mouth also tasted disgusting. For a moment, I wonder why, but then I remembered screaming. Halla had stitched up my leg and I had passed out not long after she had started. Sure, I’d had stitches before, but back home where there was laughing gas and lovely pain medication like Vicodin.

“Hiccup, go get her some water,” Halla said, glancing up at Hiccup, who nodded before moving away, disappearing from my line of sight. Halla then returned her gaze to me. “How are you feeling?”

I swallowed some of the disgusting saliva. Ow, even that hurt. “Like hell,” I croaked. Halla cracked a smile. “How long was I out?”

“About a day,” she replied. “Storm’s still going. It hit not long after you feigned.”

Well, that explained the hard surface that I was laying on instead of the bed downstairs in Halla’s house. And as I woke up more, I became more aware of things beyond Halla. The smell of a fire and cooking meat. The soft chatter of people. 

Hiccup returned a moment later with a cup, which he handed to Halla. With her help, I managed to take a sip. The water was nice and cool and felt fantastic going down my sore throat. It also helped with the horrible taste in my mouth. Halla moved the cup away from my mouth as I swallowed the last of what she had given me. My stomach thanked me for sending something to it after so long, even if it wasn’t food.

“Better?” she asked, setting the cup down somewhere out of view. Possibly the bench. 

I nodded. “Thanks.”

Halla smiled again. “I’m going to check on your stitches.”

“Okay,” I said as she moved down the table I was lying on to check on my leg. I looked over at Hiccup as I felt Halla messing with the wrappings. Now that I was more awake, I could see that Hiccup looked tired. No, not tired. Exhausted. “When was the last time you slept?”

He frowned slightly for a second before saying, “The night before the ships got back.”

“So you stayed next to me the entire time?”

Hiccup looked down sheepishly. “Pretty much.”

“That has to be…the sweetest thing anyone’s ever done for me,” I said, a soft smile on my lips as Hiccup looked toward me. He returned the smile after a moment. “Now go get some sleep. You look like you’re about ready to fall over.”

He laughed and ducked his head. “Right. I’ll see you later.”

“I’ll be here,” I said as he moved away. He glanced back as he walked, a grin on his face. “Since I can’t really walk at the moment.”

“And it’ll probably be a couple weeks before you can without help,” Halla said, coming back up to stand beside my head. “The boar didn’t go very deep, but it was a good size.”

A couple weeks. Couldn’t say I was really all that surprised. And since they didn’t have crutches, as far as I knew, I’d have to rely on help to get anywhere. I nodded. “Okay.”

“Now, you just rest. Try to sleep. I’ll get you something to eat when you wake up,” Halla said as she readjusted the pillow under my head. 

“Alright,” I said, nodding. She smiled before I closed my eyes. 

“Sleep well, Kendra.”

*****

It was two days later when we were finally able to leave the Hall. With the help of Halla, I had been able to sit up and eat the day after I had woken up. My stomach had been so thankful to have something in it other than water and my saliva. Hiccup had spent most of the days we were all stuck in the Hall by my side. Halla would occasionally give me a look, but said nothing. Perhaps she was realizing that Hiccup was a good kid. That or she had finally realized that I was going to be friends with him no matter what anyone else thought. 

When the time came to leave the Hall, I had tried to tell them that I could make it without being carried, that I could do it with Halla’s help. Did they listen? Nope. I ended up leaving the Hall the same way that I had entered; being carried by the chief of the village. And this time, I was aware enough to feel a bit embarrassed. I was eighteen years old, had only been in Berk maybe a month or so, had been injured twice, and was being carried in the arms of their chief like a child. Again. If the elder was right and gods or something had brought me to Berk, they seemed to have it out for me. 

When we stepped out of the Hall, I was hit by a wave of cold that caused goose bumps to pop up everywhere. I shivered slightly. If Stoick noticed, he said nothing. The sky was spotted with fluffy white clouds. Glancing around, I could see that the village was now covered in several feet of snow. If any buildings had been damaged, I couldn’t tell. Hopefully, no one’s home had been damaged. 

Hiccup had been just behind us when we had left the Hall though by the time we arrived at Halla’s he was nowhere in sight. Halla had to clear some snow away from her door before we could enter, but everything looked to be in order when we did. Though it was cold. As Stoick carried me over to the bed and set me down on it, I could hear Halla working on getting a fire going to warm the place up. “Thank you, chief. Hopefully, this is the last time I get injured.”

He gave me a small smile. “Hopefully. Either way, once that leg is better, you’ll start training with a dagger.”

“See if the Hofferson girl can help her,” Halla said as she stood up from beside the now blazing fire. It illuminated the room and slowly began to fill it with warmth. “She and Kendra have similar builds.”

Stoick nodded. Hofferson. That named sounded familiar. “Hofferson?”

“Astrid Hofferson,” Halla replied. That’s why the name sounded familiar. Hiccup had mentioned her once or twice. Or several dozen times. “Four years younger than you, but talented with an axe. Especially for someone her age.”

“Aye, and proficient with other weapons as well,” Stoick added. He glanced over at me and looked me up and down. “They do have similar builds. Good thinking, Halla. I’ll go speak with the Hofferson’s.”

Just as Stoick was heading for the door, it burst open and Hiccup ran into the room though thankfully stopped in time to keep from running into his father. His notebook was in his hands. “Dad.”

“Hiccup,” Stoick said. As soon as his name was out of his father’s mouth, Hiccup was moving around his father and over to where I sat on the bed. Stoick watched his son for a moment before leaving Halla’s, closing the door behind him. Halla watched the chief leave, then glanced over at Hiccup before heading upstairs. 

“I had an idea. To help you walk until that heals,” Hiccup said as he sat down on the bed beside me, opening up his notebook. He flipped past pages and pages of drawings until he stopped on one about halfway through and showed it to me. It was a blueprint, for something that looked like a crutch. Something to help me walk until my leg healed. 

“So this is where you ran off to when we left the Hall,” I said, looking at the details of the blueprint. It was slightly curved at the top where I would lean on it, and he had drawn another version, a padded version, just next to it. It had three support pieces that went about halfway down to crutch, were they joined back up with the main piece. 

“Yeah. Still needs a little tweaking, but I think it’ll work,” he said.

I smiled over at him. “It’s going to be great. Thank you.”

He returned the smile before looking down at the blueprint. Just next to the drawing of the padded version, there was writing. It looked almost like a list, but I couldn’t read it. I pointed to it on the page. “What does that say?”

“It’s just a list of possible paddings,” he replied before looking up at me with a slight frown. “You can’t read?”

“I can read just fine. Just not that,” I said, gesturing to the writing in his notebook. “I don’t know that language.”

He glanced down at the page before looking back at me. “You’re speaking it right now.”

“I…what?” I asked. I was speaking a language that I didn’t even know, yet he and everyone on Berk sounded like they were speaking English to me. 

“What language are you hearing?” he asked.

“English,” I replied.

He looked slightly confused. “What?”

“English.”

“What’s that?”

He didn’t know what I was saying. The word didn’t exist. Like that one episode of Doctor Who where people in Pompeii didn’t know the word volcano. It just didn’t translate. “Guess the name of it doesn’t translate. But how can I be speaking a language that I don’t know and hearing the one that I do know?”

Hiccup shrugged. “Gothi did say the gods could be behind bringing you here. Maybe they are behind this too.”

“Maybe,” I said, looking down at the page, at the words that I couldn’t understand. How long had I been here? A few weeks? A month? I wasn’t entirely sure. How long would I be here? Would I be here for the events of the movie, or find myself back home before everything here in Berk happened? Would I ever go home at all? “Can you teach me?”

I looked over at Hiccup. He looked a bit surprised. “What, teach you how to read?”

“Yeah,” I replied. “I have no idea who brought me here, or for how long. But no matter how long I am here, I think it would be helpful if I could read your language.”

“You want me to teach you? Why not ask Halla, or my dad, or- “

“I’m not asking them, I’m asking you,” I said, cutting him off. 

He had the same look on his face that he had that one night in the Hall when Snotlout had asked why I was sitting with his ‘useless’ cousin. Years of being put down, of seeing his inventions fail and being ridiculed for it had taken their toll on his self-confidence.

“Will you?” I asked. “Please?”

He nodded after a moment. “Okay.”

“Great. I’ve got plenty of downtime due to this,” I said with a grin, gesturing to my leg. That got a smile out of him. “Though I’m supposed to start training once it’s healed. With a certain young Viking lady, you’ve mentioned.”

He ducked his head slightly and reached up to scratch the back of his neck. “Oh, I’ve mentioned Astrid before?”

“Oh, just one or two dozen times,” I said, fighting down a grin.


	11. Fire and Ice, But Mostly Fire

It took Hiccup a couple days to get the crutch done, tweaks and all, and it did really help. I was able to get around on my own. I was slow, but at least I was able to move without being carried. That, and I didn’t want to go very fast and risk screwing up the stitches. I did not need to go through that experience again anytime soon.

Hiccup was usually with me whenever I was out and about, and I found myself spending more days in the Stall since I couldn’t help Halla very well when I was moving around so slowly. Whenever he had a break from helping Gobber, he would break out his notebook and start teaching me the letters of the alphabet in their language. It was slow going, and hard. I’d never been very good at languages, and had barely passed French in high school. But he was a patient teacher, and kindly corrected me when I got something wrong. After a week I was able to recognize Hiccup’s name as well as my own. 

It was after being on the crutch for about a week that I was awoken in the middle of the night again to roars and yelling. Halla came running down the stairs, helmet and axe in hand. Using the crutch, I got up off the bed as careful and as quickly as I could, wincing slightly as the stitches pulled. Halla put on her helmet and grabbed my left arm, helping me to the door. “Let’s get you to the Hall.”

“Okay,” I said as she briefly let go of my arm to open the door. Once outside, she wrapped her arm around me to help me walk quicker.

Outside was chaos. There was still a good amount of snow on the ground and it looked orange as it reflected nearby flames. Dragons darted across the night sky and Vikings with weapons ran after them with a yell. We quickly moved up the path toward the Hall, going as fast as my leg would let me. It was as we were almost up to the next level that someone ran up to us, causing us to stop walking. 

“I can help her, Halla,” said Hiccup.

Halla hesitated for a moment before removing her arm and stepping out of the way. Hiccup soon took her place. I gave her a small smile. “Good luck.”

“Get up there as quick as you can,” she said before running off in the direction she had just come from, raising her axe. 

“How’s the leg?” Hiccup asked as we starting moving again.

“Achy, but I think the stitches are okay,” I replied. 

We were almost to the base of the stairs when a sound in the air made me stop and glance back. A sound that I knew, but one I had not heard since finding myself in Berk. Only one thing could make that sound here. I felt the corners of my mouth twitch upward. Hiccup looked at me, confused for a moment, but if he was going to say anything, he was interrupted by a distant yell.

“NIGHT FURY!”

A flash of blue fire and one of the catapults was destroyed. Hiccup tugged on my arm and we starting moving again. “Come on.”

Walking fast had hurt, but the stairs felt even worse. I winced but kept moving. “Wh-what was that sound?”

“Another dragon,” he replied. “A Night Fury. No one’s ever seen one.” 

I glanced up. We were maybe halfway up the stairs. Just a few more minutes of pain. “You guys have a lot of dragons here. Wouldn’t it be smarter to, ow, just leave?”

“We’re almost there,” he said. “We’re Vikings. We have stubbornness issues.”

I hissed in pain, glancing up at the doors of the Hall. Close. So close. “Gonna have to check the stitches when we get in there.”

It took a few more painful minutes to reach the top and once back on level ground the pain lessened slightly, but my leg was throbbing. Thankfully someone was at the door and opened it for us. There was a good number of people in the Hall, though not as many as when I had first woken up in Berk and been brought up here. Those that were in the Hall were children sitting close to their mothers. A couple babies were testing their lungs, their wails echoing in the large room.

Hiccup helped me walk over to the nearest bench, which I dropped down onto so hard I was momentarily distracted from the pain in my leg. I pulled the crutch out from under my arm and leaned it against the table before working on lifting my leg up onto the bench. Hiccup sat down next to my foot as I reached for the bandage on my calf and started to undo it. 

“I got it,” said Hiccup, gently pushing my hands out of the way so he could undo the bandage. 

I gave him a small smile. “Thanks.”

It took a minute, but he got it off. I glanced at the bandage, which thankfully was blood stain free, before looking down at my leg. The skin around the five stitches was red, but none seemed to be bleeding. And the healing skin hadn’t opened. “Thank goodness. I was so sure she’d have to redo them later.”

“Thankfully she doesn’t,” he said before working on redoing the bandage. 

“Yeah, I really did not want a repeat of that experience,” I said. Just letting it rest on the bench was helping with the pain. It still hurt, but was slowly lessening. “Once was enough for me.”

Hiccup pulled his notebook out from his vest and set it on the table. “If you want, we can work on your reading some more while we wait for the raid to end.”

“What about Gobber?” I asked. “Don’t you need to go help him?”

Hiccup shrugged. “He’ll understand.”

I raised an eyebrow.

He glanced up at me. “Okay, so I’ll probably have to do extra work tomorrow for him. It’s fine.”

“Well, what about your net thrower? Don’t you want to do test out the tweaks you made?” I asked, glancing over at the doors to the Hall as someone else came in with a young child in tow. 

“Nah, maybe the next raid,” he replied. He was giving up the chance to test it after tweaking it to keep me company. 

I smiled. “Or we can test it on a sheep or something before the next one. Have it all ready to test on a dragon.”

He smiled as he opened up his notebook and picked up his pencil. “Sounds like a plan,” he said before writing something down. He then set down his pencil and held up the page for me to see. “What letters are these?”

I grimaced, only this time not from the pain in my leg.

*****

It was almost an hour before the raid ended. Halla came into the Hall just behind Stoick, who announced that it was safe to leave. Mother’s began to gather their children and head out while Hiccup put away his notebook and I grabbed my crutch. Hiccup stood up and I was about to swing my leg off the bench, but Halla held up a hand to stop me. I set the crutch back down as Stoick and Halla stopped before us. 

“How’s the damage?” I asked as Halla sat down where Hiccup had been and beginning to remove the bandages. “We checked it after we got here and it wasn’t bleeding.”

“Good, no bleeding is good. And thankfully no one was seriously hurt,” Halla replied.

“Aye, though we lost half a herd of sheep and several houses,” Stoick added, glancing over at Halla as she looked over my leg. 

“My home was partly destroyed,” Halla said after a moment, looking up from the wound and at me. I felt my stomach drop. Halla had been the first one to welcome me here, and had taken me in. “The loft is completely gone. I need to go through my supplies and take stock of what survived once it’s cleared enough to get in there. It’ll take at least a week to repair. Until then, I’ll be staying with Phlegma.”

“What about me?” I asked as she went back to inspecting my leg. She glanced up at Stoick.

“You’ll be staying with us,” Stoick said, moving over to stand beside Hiccup, who did a double take at his father’s words.

I glanced at Halla, who didn’t look completely thrilled with the idea but seemed to be trying to smile all the same. For some reason I had the feeling that no one else wanted me to stay with them while her home was rebuilt. Even after being in Berk over a month, maybe even two since I’d lost track of how long I’d been in Berk, I still rarely got smiles from those I delivered things to for Halla. Phlegma smiled at me whenever I dropped something off for her, but apparently she didn’t like me enough to stay with her.

“A little irritated, but the stitches look fine. Should be able to remove them about the time the house is rebuilt,” she said before rewrapping my calf.

Halla finished wrapping it before helping me up off the bench, Hiccup handing me the crutch. It was slow going, but we left the Hall a few minutes later and headed down the stairs. Halla had an arm around me to help and Hiccup walked on my other side. Halla and Stoick started talking about the repairs to be made to her house, which I didn’t really pay attention to since I was busy making sure I put one foot after the other. 

When we reached the house of the chief and his family, Stoick went inside after bidding the healer goodnight while Halla and I stopped just outside the door. She removed her arm from around me and stepped away. “I’ll come by and check on your leg tomorrow after I take stock of what survived of my stores. See if I have everything to make a salve for it. If not, I’ll see if Gothi has some.” 

“Gothi?” I asked. Why would she have some salve?

“I learned all that I know from her,” Halla replied. “She still knows plenty of healing techniques that I don’t.”

“Oh.”

She smiled. “Get some rest, Kendra.”

“You too, Halla,” I said as she moved away, heading for the lower levels were Phlegma lived.

I followed Hiccup inside and we headed for the stairs up to his room in the loft. We were starting up them when Stoick walked up to stand beside where we were on them. “Hiccup.”

In front of me, Hiccup stopped and looked at his father, who he had to look down at due to the stairs. “Gobber expects you at the stall bright and early to make up for not being there during the raid.” 

I raised my eyebrows and fought down a smile. Hiccup glanced over at me and fought down a smile as well. “I kinda figured.”

“Right,” Stoick said with a nod. I glanced back and forth between them. Okay, this was awkward. This was going to be an interesting week.

“I better get Kendra comfortable and then get some sleep,” Hiccup said after a moment.

“Right. Right. Sleep well you two,” he said, glancing over at me before heading toward the door that led to his room under the loft.

Hiccup let out a breath before moving again toward his room. I reached the top of the stairs and stood there, watching as he walked across the room to a chest along the wall and pulling out a pillow and a couple blankets. 

“You can take the bed, and I’ll just sleep downstairs,” he said.

“You don’t have to sleep downstairs. You can stay up here. I don’t bite,” I said, giving him a small smile.

He just looked at me for a moment with an expression I couldn’t identify before he nodded. “Okay,” he said before heading over to the wall across from the bed and laying out the blanket to lay on.

I grinned as I walked over to the bed and dropped down on it, leaning the crutch against the wall. “Sorry for kicking you out of your bed.”

“It’s okay,” he said as he laid down on the little bed that he’d made for himself on the floor. “Your stitches probably wouldn’t like having to get up and down from sleeping on the floor.”

I chuckled softly as I took off my boots. “True.” 

Once they were off, I laid back against the pillow, pulling the blanket over me. The candle on the desk by his bed flickered as I shifted to get comfortable. I closed my eyes after I finally found a comfortable position and tried to fall asleep. A few people seemed to still be awake and I could hear their calls to each other through the walls, though I couldn’t understand what they were saying. Across the room, I could hear Hiccup roll over.

I opened my eyes and stared up at the ceiling, watching the light from the candle flicker. “I haven’t shared a room with someone in years. It’s only ever been sleepovers, the last one when I was…fourteen or fifteen for a friend’s birthday party.”

I could hear Hiccup shift on his blankets. “A couple years ago, Snotlout and his family had to stay here after their house burnt down in a raid,” he said. “It was definitely not a party.”

I grinned up at the ceiling. “Yeah, can’t see that one being any fun.”

“I used to stay with my Aunt Freda and Snotlout when we were little and our dads went on trips. Those weren’t bad. Actually, they were kinda fun from what I remember,” he said and I could hear the smile in his voice. Then he sighed. “But they stopped being fun by the time I was five or six, and after I started working with Gobber I stopped staying there at all.”

I didn’t respond. I didn’t know how to. I just stared at the ceiling, at least until a massive snore erupted from downstairs that made me jump slightly. It sounded like a chainsaw going right next to my head.

Hiccup chuckled. “Sorry, probably should have warned you about that.”

“Yeah, a little warning would have been nice,” I said, sitting up. He turned his head toward me as I sat up. “How do you sleep with that?”

He shrugged. “Guess I’m used to it.”

I must have made a face because he started laughing. I was tempted to throw the pillow at him, but then I’d have to get up and get it back. 

“Was your mom used to it too?” I asked. Shit. Foot in mouth. Why did I have to say that of all things? Sure, I’d wondered about his mother before, but had never ask since no one ever seemed to mention her. 

Hiccup’s smile faded slightly and he turned to look at the ceiling. 

“Sorry,” I said, looking down at my lap. “I shouldn’t have asked that.”

“No, it’s okay,” he said. I glanced up to see him roll over to look at me. His eyes dropped to the floor. “I don’t know if she was or not. I don’t even remember her. She died when I was less than a year old.”

Sure, my mom and I weren’t exactly close, but to not have her be there for me at all? Or the other way around and not have my dad around growing up? I couldn’t imagine. 

“What happened?” I asked after a moment. I’d already stuck my foot in my mouth once, might as well go all out. 

“Dragon raid,” he said quietly, glancing up at me before rolling over onto his back to face the ceiling again. 

That…sucked. And actually explained a bit. Why his dad hated dragons so much. They’d killed his wife when Hiccup had been a baby. No wonder he reacted as he had after the whole thing with the Monstrous Nightmare. Or would react since that was still some time in the future.

“I’m sorry,” I said quietly, laying back down. “I’m not exactly close to my mom and dad. Shoot, I look for any excuse to spend as much time out of the house as possible. But to not have one of them around…I can’t imagine.”

Hiccup didn’t say anything. All I could hear was his quiet breathing across the room. 

I sighed and closed my eyes. “Night Hiccup.”

“Night.”


	12. I've Got Scars and Lumps and Bruises

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, the chapter title is from “I’ve Got a Dream” from Tangled, but it just fit this chapter way to perfectly.

Staying with Hiccup and his father for a week was…interesting to say the least. Breakfast every morning was rather awkward, with neither of them knowing what to say and me sitting there in the middle glancing between them like I was watching a tennis match. Dinner hadn’t been much better. 

So when Halla arrived one morning to remove my stitches and saying that her house was finished, I was relieved. Not that I hadn’t enjoyed spending time with Hiccup, I had. After the first night of my stay where I’d inserted my foot into my mouth, it did end up being like a sleepover. We’d just talk until we fell asleep, or rather when he fell asleep. Unlike Hiccup, I was not used to loud snoring and did not get used to it in a week.

I was also relieved to get the stitches out so I didn’t have to worry about pulling them all the time. That, and no matter how much padding the crutch had, after using it so much my armpit was sore. And it got me away from another awkward breakfast. Taking them out was uncomfortable, and once she was done she wrapped a thin bandage around my calf. 

“Thanks, Halla,” I said, lowering my leg over the side of the Hiccup’s bed, which we had sat on so that Halla could remove the stitches. Hiccup and his father were downstairs finishing up breakfast.

Halla smiled as she stood from the bed. “Now, my house is done and I’ve got something to show you.”

With that, we headed downstairs, where breakfast was being cleaned up. 

“Thanks for letting me stay here,” I said as I reached the base of the stairs. 

Stoick’s beard twitched. “We were glad to have you.”

“Anyway, I’m off to show her the house,” Halla announced, pushing me toward the door. The massive red beard twitched again. Yeah, he was definitely smiling under there. 

“I’ll see you later, Hiccup,” I said as I headed out the door, glancing back at waving at him. 

He smiled. “I’ll be at the forge.”

We took it slow back to Halla’s since my foot had to get used to supporting all my weight again and it felt a bit odd to do so after so long of trying to keep weight off of it as to not do anything to pull the stitches. 

Approaching the house, it looked pretty much the same but something was different. Something that I couldn’t put my finger on until we stepped inside. The main room downstairs seemed to be longer than it used to be. There was another table now beside the fire in the center, and more shelves along the walls. The bed was in the same place and I turned to head to it, but Halla put a hand on my shoulder to stop me. I glanced back at her. 

She shook her head, smiling. “Come with me.”

She removed her hand and headed for the stairs. Upstairs was a place I had never been to before. There was a hallway and two doors; one near the front and another toward the rear of the house. She led me toward the one at the rear and opened the door, waiting for me to go in first.

It wasn’t the biggest room in the world, but it was able to fit a bed, which had a chest sitting at the end of it, as well as a desk under a small window that was currently open and letting in the morning light. A bedroom. 

She was giving me my own room.

I slowly turned around to look at Halla where she stood in the doorway smiling. “I’ve been considering adding another room to the house for some time now, for storage purposes. Finally decided to go ahead with it, but for a different reason.”

She paused, watching me. She blinked and looked toward the chest at the end of the bed. “The chest has my old things in it for you to use since they fit you rather well.”

Halla returned her gaze to me just in time for me to wrap my arms around her in a hug. She seemed startled for a moment, but then wrapped her arms around me and hugged me gently. I hadn’t been hugged since coming to Berk. 

“Thank you,” I whispered. 

I could hear the smile in her voice. “You’re welcome, Kendra.”

*********

It was a couple days later when I was sitting with Hiccup eating dinner and someone walked over to where we sat on our own. Hiccup’s eyes widened slightly. “A-Astrid. Hi, Astrid. Hi.”

She stopped at the end of the table and looked over at him for a moment with a raised eyebrow. Hiccup turned red and went back to eating is dinner. Astrid then turned her attention to me, her expression neutral. “Your leg finally better?” 

“Um, yes,” I replied.

“Good. We start training in the morning. Meet me at the base of the stairs to the Hall just after sunrise.” 

She then turned and left before I could even say anything, catching up with two adults that waited for her by the doors of the Hall. They stepped out into the night together. 

To be honest, I had forgotten about the training. It seemed like so long ago that Stoick and Halla had talked about if after I had been injured by the boar. 

“Okay,” I said slowly, turning my attention back to my dinner. “Apparently I start training in the morning.”

“You forgot about it, didn’t you?” Hiccup asked before taking a bit from his piece of fish.

“Yup,” I said with a slight smile before taking a bit of my own dinner. “The last I heard of it was just after we got back to the house once the storm was over. So yeah, I forgot. So sue me.”

“Sue who? Who’s Sue?” Hiccup asked, looking confused.

“Never mind,” I replied, waving it off. “Just an expression from home. Not really sure how to explain it so it would make sense. Anyway, I’m guessing the only reason you remembered the training is because of who is going to be training me?”

Hiccup didn’t look up from his dinner but shrugged slightly. “It’s not the only reason I remembered.”

“Right,” I said slowly, fighting down a smile. 

Hiccup rolled his eyes, fighting down his own smile as he ate.

**********

“You’re late,” she said, sitting in the grass beside the steps leading up to the Great Hall.

“Sorry,” I replied.

Astrid said nothing, just got up from where she had been sitting on the grass. Her axe was nowhere in sight. Actually, she didn’t seem to have any weapons on her at all. 

“I thought you were training me in weapons?” I asked.

“I am,” she said. “But you are going to train the way I do, and I start every day with a run around the village. Then I work with my axe. But I’ll be showing you how to use different weapons, not just a dagger, so you can know how to use them.”

I nodded. Okay, that made sense. No need to mess up her own training routine completely just to train me. 

“Try to keep up,” she said before taking off down the path I had just come up. I sighed and began to follow her. 

She wasn’t flat out running, but she wasn’t going all that slow either. At first, I was able to keep up with her, but after about five minutes I started to get further and further behind. My feet hurt in the boots and I could hear my blood pounding in my ears. 

It had been a year since I’d had to run like this in P.E. since it had been almost a year since I had graduated high school when I had found myself in Berk, and I was feeling it. This kind of pace had not been this hard back in school. But it was now. 

We ran all the way down to the docks before turning to head back up, and the incline back up was even harder and I fell further behind Astrid. By the time I caught up with her standing outside of a house that must have been hers, she’d been waiting for a couple of minutes. 

I put my hands on my knees when I stopped before her, panting heavily. She was breathing harder than normal, but not nearly as hard as I was. My hair fell around my face, pieces of it sticking to my sweaty forehead. Apparently the braid I’d put it into had fallen out, not that it had been the best job in the world. I hadn’t braided my hair since middle school, and while it was fine when I was helping Halla, it apparently didn’t hold up well to running.

I heard Astrid sigh before seeing her head inside the house out of the corner of my eye. At least, she had waited outside until I caught up, else I probably would have gotten lost in the village. Again. And I’d be able to keep up with her once I got back into the routine of running.

When she came back out, I straightened. She carried her axe in her right hand and a dagger was at her hip. She held her left hand out to me. “Here.”

I looked down to her hand to see it held chord that I could use to put my hair back up, since the one I had been wearing was gone and who knows where it had fallen. I took it from her and started to braid my hair. 

I paused when I spotted her watching me with raised eyebrows. “What?”

“That’s how you braid your hair?” she asked.

I nodded. “Yeah.”

“No wonder it fell out,” she said, leaning her axe against the house and coming around to stand behind me. “Here. I’ll show you.”

I could feel her hands working out the mess that I’d called a braid before redoing it properly, and she told me exactly what she was doing as she was doing so that I could do it myself in the future. Hopefully. I’d try to replicate her results at least. 

She stepped away when she was done and I ran my hand along the braid she had made. Neat and clean, and the cord tied nice and tight at where it ended between my shoulder blades. So that was how it was supposed to feel. I gave her a small smile. “Thanks.”

Astrid returned it as she picked up her axe. “Let’s go.”

Astrid led the way again with me following though this time walking, so I wasn’t a mile behind her but a few steps. More people were out and about the village now, starting their days. Of course, a good number of them glared at me as I followed Astrid. Not as many as it used to be, since I had been here several months, but I still got the looks rather often. I mostly just ignored them, but as we walked by Astrid didn’t ignore the looks. She noticed the glares, and to my surprise, glared right back at those we passed. 

“Why did you do that?” I asked as we left the village and headed for the tree line. “Why did you glare back at them?”

She glanced back at me. “You’re no spy. If you were, Halla would have known in two seconds.”

“And instead, she took me in.” Back at that meeting in the Hall, Halla had been the one to stand up for me. Well, her and the Elder. 

“My family, we trust her judgment. We respect our chief’s judgment. And Gothi’s. So if they say you’re not a spy, then you’re not.” 

That reminded me. “Are you related to the Elder?”

Astrid stopped walking and turned around to face me, looking slightly surprised.

“Your eyes,” I added. “They remind me of hers.”

After a moment, she smiled. “She’s my great aunt. My grandmother’s older sister.”

I smiled. Astrid then turned around and we continued on into the forest. We stopped in a small clearing where the trees had scars from being hit with an axe numerous times over the years. 

Astrid pulled the dagger from her waist and flipped it, holding the hilt toward me. I took it in my right hand. Immediately she had to correct how I was holding it.

“Okay, now see the marks on that tree?” She pointed to the one that had rather fresh scars from an axe about twenty feet away. I nodded. “You’re going to be aiming for that mark.”

I took a deep breath and threw the dagger. It flew through the air and clattered to the ground ten feet away from the tree and way to the left of it. I wasn’t expecting to hit it, but I wasn’t expecting to do that badly either. And that was only with a dagger. How bad would it be if she had asked me to throw the axe? 

**********

“Looks like the first day of training went well.”

“Shut up.” I glared at Hiccup and then winced as I sat down on a stool in the forge that afternoon.

My entire body ached. After showing me how to correctly throw the dagger and spending a while on getting my form right, I had tried the axe. It had only gone about five feet before falling to the ground. I just wasn’t strong enough to throw a weapon that heavy that far. Then we had started hand to hand combat. My bruises had bruises. 

“Was it that bad?” he asked as he started sharpening a sword.

I shook my head. “Not really. Mostly I just didn’t realize how out of shape I was. Though hand to hand combat…yeah, she completely kicked my ass.”

“Don’t worry, lass. It’ll get easier for you in time,” Gobber called from where he was pounding on the anvil. 

I smiled over at the blacksmith. “I’m just going to be in pain until that time comes.” 

“So what all is she teaching you?” Hiccup asked, glancing up from the grindstone. 

“All sorts of weapons. I don’t remember all the names that she listed off. Though I need to build up my strength first. The knife went okay when I threw it at a tree. The axe.” I paused, thinking back to how far it had gone. “Maybe five feet? Not even close to the tree, that’s for sure. She mentioned doing some sparing once I’m further along. And not on the ground every five seconds in hand to hand training.” 

Hiccup hummed and continued to sharpen the sword.

“How far can you throw one?” I asked.

He didn’t lift his gaze from the sword.

Gobber let out a short laugh. “Throw it? He can barely pick one up.” 

I looked over at Hiccup. His gaze was still on the sword though his expression was downcast. “Hey, you still got that growth spurt coming, remember? I’m sure after that you’ll be able to not just lift one, but throw one pretty damn well.”

He just glanced up at me with a small grin before going back to sharpening the sword. 

\-----

“Late again.”

“It’s been three days. I’m not used to waking up at this time yet,” I replied as she stood up from where she had been sitting and waiting on the stairs since Berk had been covered by a fresh layer of snow during the night. “And we’re still going to train in this weather?”

She looked at me with raised eyebrows as though she couldn’t believe I’d just asked that. “This is Berk. We get snow nine months out of the year, so yes we’re still training. Get used to it.”

Then she was off running through the village. I groaned and started after her. “I slip and fall, I blame you!”

“Go right ahead,” she called back to me, not glancing back or slowing her pace. 

This time, I trailed much further behind her as we ran, and within a couple of minutes my chest was heaving and my legs felt as though they were about to fall off. I soon felt like pulling off the extra coat that I had pulled out of the trunk to wear that morning after seeing the fresh layer of snow on the ground. 

Which was exactly what I did when we stopped out front of her house. I pulled it off and dropped it on the ground, bending over as I tried to catch my breath. The snow had made it a little more difficult, and I had lost count of how many times I thought I was about to slip and fall right on my face. I missed tennis shoes.

She let me catch my breath as she went inside to grab her axe and dagger, then we were off toward the forest to train. We didn’t talk much, and I stumble a few times due to the snow, but soon the tree line came into view. And a voice yelling our names behind us. We stopped just before the trees and turned to see who was yelling. After a moment, Hiccup came into view. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Astrid start to frown. 

I met him halfway, and could hear Astrid’s footsteps behind me as she followed. He stumbled as he reached us and I grabbed his arm to keep him from falling. “What’s going on?”

“Halla…Halla needs you. Needs your help,” he said, trying to catch his breath. He then looked over my shoulder at Astrid. “It’s Gothi. I guess she went to go see Halla this morning and…” 

He was interrupted by Astrid pushing past us, running back toward the village. Hiccup and I glanced at each other before running after her.


End file.
